Talk:Atomic Weapons Establishment

message: I think this article should include more information about the issues this site causes due to its proximity to residential population, rather than just mentioning that it is nearest town is Tadley, it is virtually IN Tadley. There is private housing and business premisis directly accross the road from the site, probably not more than 50 metres from one of the sites entrances. Local radiactivity and other obvious issues has been a big concern of residents local to AWE, although the AWE publishes leaflets claiming that radioactivity levels are lower at Aldermaston than the naturally occuring level in Cornwall.
Their leaflets also detail emergency procedures, automated telephone early warning systems to every local home and business, etc.
The site is linked by underground tunnel to the Burghfield site and Greenham Common air base, which used to be the main method of transporting ordanance. It is now transported above ground as a moving convoy with heavy police and fire service escort blocking roads, roundabouts etc to ensure the convey never comes to a standstill during transportation.
There are frequent CND demonstrations/camps on the 'lawn' outside the sites east entrance.
The site was once the subject of an episode of the Mark Thomas Product, where he hired a mobile tower crane, parked it outside the site to film the goings on within the site(on the surface at least) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.3.170.64 (talk • contribs). 08:16, 4 October 2006
::Not really worth creating an 'issues affecting the locals" section.  Tadley is to some extent a "company town", and a large proportion of the locals have direct or indirect knowledge of what actually goes on 'inside the wire' as they call it.  They know that the place is very unlikely to produce any form of 'disaster' which could affect anybody outside the fence.  Therefore most of them are quite at ease or ambivalent to the proximity of AWE, and are probably happier living next to it than they would be to other types of large industrial complex, such as a refinery/oil storage depot or chemical plant.  In fact the thing that they probably resent the most is the traffic chaos that results when outsiders come dressed in silly 'radiation suits' to be filmed doing the 'dying fly' during routine scheduled tests of the site incident alarm system.  As the business end of AWE is (reassuringly) securely behind multiple layers of heavily-guarded barbed wire, people fill their 'knowledge vacuum' with ill-informed conjecture about what actually happens there.  In fact, the only things worth knowing that you cannot glean from AWE's own public website are those facts which are simply 'secret'. :-).  MaxieT 15:31, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just to say, I live about 400 yards from the site (and have done for the past 18 years), and have never heard anyone ever say "inside the wire", be it kids or adults. And regarding people's thoughts about the plant, most people go on the basis of, "well if something does go bad, I'm gonna die 0.0000001 seconds before you" --Scuzzmonkey 20:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Scuzzmonkey, I totally agree with the 'inside the wire' claim and therefore have removed it until someone can justify it's presence. Just to note, the rest of the trivia section has also been removed due to lack of any real content.RaseaC 12:06, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Very surprised (and slightly dismayed) at the '0.0000001 seconds' comment. It goes against my own experience of the area, and makes me wonder just what people actually think happens at Aldermaston.  AWE Aldermaston is the centre for R&D and component manufacture.  The actual warhead is assembled elsewhere (at Burghfield).  It is fiendishly difficult to detonate a nuclear weapon intentionally, and practically impossible to detonate one accidentally.  The method of doing it is a complex science in itself.  The ingredients necessary for a nuclear explosion (as opposed to a criticality) are simply not brought together at Aldermaston.  The only way that mass sudden death could come to the area outside the fence would be if AWE were the target of somebody else's weapon, and then it wouldn't really matter where you lived, would it?MaxieT 10:09, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but when people say nuke, or bomb, or anything to do with explosives people always assume that there is a possibility that something may (or may not) go wrong, no matter how remote. This is especially true with Project Orion (I believe that that is the name) which involves a large laser (not sure what kind) that is said to be able to recreate nuclear explosions. Now whether this is true or not (the explosion bit, the laser is being put in right this second, they've been building the shell for months and you can see it clearly from the road if you drive from Tadley to Aldermaston. As such certain "truths" have been established by the locals. What I said was however, is that is isn't that the locals expect anything to go wrong (quite the reverse) anyone that does think that moves away PDQ. Just that in the event of something happening (no matter how remote) none of us would ever know about it happening. And saying that, neither would half of Reading or Basingstoke if the rumors of our (the UK's) nuclear capacity is correct). Plus the possible "chain reaction" if it was big enough to hit AWE Burghfield. But as I said, this is all word of mouth, and things that people just believe and take to be fact. Which is what normally happens when you have a couple of thousand people living around a "secret" Nuclear Government Facility. --Scuzzmonkey 11:55, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough, and I can understand how a lack of information can leave a vacuum in people's minds, which can start to fill with fear.  Intelligent people are naturally curious, and if the flow of 'genuine' information is constrained, they become vulnerable to ill-informed 'gleanings', sensationalist speculation and conspiracy theories.  It's only natural.  I sometimes feel that AWE is often its own worst enemy in this respect, but it is largely the Government - not AWE - that sets the boundaries of what is secret, and Government officials sometimes seem to use secrecy as a tool for self-aggrandisement.  BTW the Orion laser is a high-energy pulse laser, which artificially recreates (by non-nuclear means) the short-lived intense high-temperature flash of detonation.  The idea being to observe how components and materials behave during the event, without the need to actually detonate a weapon (which is of course now impossible due to the Test Ban Treaty). It doesn't actually create an explosion - it just simulates the thermal conditions found during one.  Orion is simply a 'new generation' of similar devices which have been operating elsewhere on the site for many years.MaxieT 15:00, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Issues affecting local residents

message: The AWE is one of the UK's premier siesmology detectors using the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty system(CTBT) designed orignially to detect underground nuclear explotions of 20 kilotons, it is now so sensative it can detect events of 10 tonnes and detects over 500,000 events each year, it detected the Boxing Day Asain Tsunami, and at the same time it also detected that the whole of the UK landmass increased in elevation by 15mm.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.3.170.64 (talk • contribs). 08:33, 4 October 2006
::This is done at Blacknest, a small country house near Brimpton, a little to the West of Aldermaston.  The place is totally unclassified (i.e. public knowledge), and is also used for civilian seismic science uses. MaxieT 15:31, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Seismology

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thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:AWE.JPG

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message: In the section "AWE's responsibilities", the fourth bullet point does not make sense: "To develop the skills, technologies and techniques that could underpin future arms limitation treaties but do not invest in their people". Specifically, the clause "do not invest in their people" has no subject. Who is that do not invest in their people? (I am unable to correct this error because I don't know what the author was trying to say.)
Rgrayuk (talk) 09:22, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nonsensical bullet point