AWE Aldermaston: Inside Britain's largest nuclear weapons site building the next generation of warheads

As conflict rages in the Middle East, we toured the top secret facility in rural West Berkshire building Britain’s next generation of nuclear warheads.

Last week, we were granted rare access to AWE Aldermaston, a highly secure site where no media have been allowed inside for more than 10 years.

The taxpayer-funded facility is part of the Defence Nuclear Enterprise, the partnership that operates, maintains and develops the UK's nuclear deterrent, which has seen a nuclear-armed submarine continuously patrolling at sea for more than 55 years.

I presented my passport upon my arrival. Everyone must be a British national.

Layers of barbed wire fences surround the perimeter. Armed guards carrying carbine rifles patrol the streets and rooftops.

Nuclear warheads are designed, tested and built at Aldermaston. The Government and Ministry of Defence decide how they are deployed.

The components – which contain weaponised uranium and plutonium – are stored in secure vaults, some underground. They are then assembled at AWE Burghfield seven miles away.

Our visit coincided with a visit from Secretary of Defence John Healey, following the Government’s announcement of a further £15 billion to upgrade the country’s existing nuclear weapons programme.

Scientists at Aldermaston said they hope the new warhead, called Astraea, will be ready for deployment by the 2030s.

But no one would explain why the current arsenal needs replacing. They only confirmed the requirements for Astraea are still being finalised.

Driving around the 700-acre site, once a Second World War airbase, it was clear why a significant facelift is needed.

Most buildings date from the early Cold War era of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. One factory, with towering chimneys, has now been retired. A network of pipes power the buildings with steam.

A major demolition programme is currently under way which will include a £600m new facility called the HUB, complete with laboratories, offices and lecture halls.

We were initially excluded from the national print huddle. But we had to ask Mr Healey – the first defence secretary to visit since 2018 – whether he thought all this investment in AWE Aldermaston would make West Berkshire a more viable target for foreign aggressors, especially in light of residents living in the vicinity of the site being asked to sign up to emergency text alerts.

He responded: “In terms of the security of the site, you can see how secure it is.

“And in many ways, this is producing the deterrent for us all, including yourself.”

Read the full exchange below.

READ MORE: We meet defence secretary John Healey as Britain renews its nuclear deterrent

The sprawling campus employs more than 7,000 scientists and engineers. It has taken on about 1,500 new staff in the past year.

As of this month, it also provides training to 770 apprentices, graduates and industry placements.

The site also contains three lakes and an Anglo-Saxon burial mound.

One building is home to 56 dogs – trained in sniffing explosives and detecting toxic substances.

A complex of modular labs is used to test materials, and we saw where new high explosives facilities are currently being built.

But the facility’s crown jewel is undoubtedly the Orion Laser building, operational since 2013.

Here, a set of 10 long pulse and two short pulse beams are fired at a non-nuclear target – only a few millimetres in size – in a vacuum sealed chamber to simulate the extreme conditions inside a nuclear warhead when detonated.

One scientist told us the energy used is “no greater than boiling a teaspoon of water” and that there was “no danger of blowing up Reading.”

The miniature models are prepared by staff over six months.

Data is then fed into an onsite supercomputer, Damson, which evaluates how effective the bomb will be.

The UK and US programmes have operated in tandem, sharing design features to save money.

But they cannot share fissile materials or test nuclear explosions under the Test Ban Treaty of 1996 and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970.

That will make Astraea the first warhead to not actually be detonated and only tested by simulation.

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