Plymouth Devonport is the site of the huge naval dockyard servicing the UK's nuclear submarine fleet including Trident (a submarine based nukiller missile system). The first of many 'Trident' Vanguard Class nuclear submarines is due to arrive at Plymouth's Devonport Dockyard in on Monday 4th February. A protest begins today involving many local and national groups such as; Exeter CND, Plymouth & District Trades Union Council, UNISON, the Green Party, Plymouth Environmental Forum, CANSAR, Stop the War Coalition and Surfers Against Sewage. There will be reports and photos from the protests uploaded later today. Storage and emissions of radioactive waste are set to increase dramatically as Trident comes into service, with terrible risks to the health and safety of Plymouth's 250,000 population. Local MP's support the Dockyard despite the strong evidence of nuclear contamination and a 1 in 80 risk of a Chernobyl-style nuclear accident at the Dockyard in the next 30 years. The closest primary school is 400 feet from the nuclear waste storage facility, and the Government has just approved an 800% increase in the discharge of Tritium radioactive gas into the air and public sewage system of Devonport. Tritium causes cancer. '...scrapping Trident now would release around £1.5 billion annually which could and should be constructively employed in areas of obvious need such as housing, education and the health service...' See this RedPepper article for more information about the issues http://www.redpepper.org.uk/natarch/xplymouth.html. To get intouch with people at the protest try phoning +44 1752 313781 or +44 7803 620390 At Faslane in Scotland, there has been a permanant peace camp afor 19 years with regular actions against the nuclear base. see http://www.faslanepeacecamp.org/ And of course theres Trident Ploughshare - taking a hammer to those illegal weapons of mass destruction whenever they can get close enough. http://www.gn.apc.org/tp2000/ Trident Ploughshares, 42-46 Bethel Street, Norwich, Norfolk, NR2 1NR Tel: +44 845 45 88 366 Fax: +44 845 45 88 364 Notes: Trident is a submarine-launched missile system. Each of the four Tridents submarines carries 14 missiles. Each missile carries a number of warheads. There is a total of 48 warheads per submarine. Each warhead has the equivalent power of more than eight times the Hiroshima bomb. Once launched, they have a range of over 4,000 miles. Trident is an American-designed system. Although the submarines are British-designed and built, the actual missiles are American and the warheads, whilst being British-built, have to follow American design in order to fit onto the missiles. In addition the missile guidance and communications systems are American. According to CND, each British Trident submarine has to cross the Atlantic, to the US Navy Base at King's Bay, Georgia, in order to take on its stock of missiles. The missiles also have to be returned to King's Bay for servicing and all test firing of the missiles (with dummy warheads) is done at US Navy firing ranges, off the American coast. Trident cost the taxpayer £12billion to develop, its weapons systems take £400million a year from the defence budget and another £280million is spent annually on its base facilities.