Inside Britain’s largest nuclear weapons site – as scientists race to build a new warhead by the 2030s

Published

3 months ago

June 20, 2025

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Vaults of enriched uranium and plutonium to make nuclear bombs are dotted about a secure site in Berkshire along with Anglo-Saxon burial mounds and a couple of lakes.

Surrounded by metal fences topped with barbed wire, much of the nuclear weapons facility at Aldermaston in Berkshire looks frozen in time from the 1950s rather than ready for war in the 21st century.

But a renewed focus on the importance of the UK’s nuclear deterrent means the government is giving much of its nuclear infrastructure a facelift as it races to build a new warhead by the 2030s when the old stock goes out of service.

Sky News was among a group of news organisations given rare access to the largest of Britain’s nuclear weapons locations run by AWE.

The acronym stands for Atomic Weapons Establishment – but a member of staff organising the visit told me that the public body, which is owned by the Ministry of Defence, no longer attributes the letters that make up its name to those words.

“We are just A, W, E,” she said.

She did not explain why.

Perhaps it is to avoid making AWE’s purpose so immediately obvious to anyone interested in applying for a job but not so keen on weapons of mass destruction.

For the scientists and engineers, working here though, there seems to be a sense of genuine purpose as they develop and ensure the viability and credibility of the warheads at the heart of the UK’s nuclear deterrent, this country’s ultimate security guarantee.

“It’s nice to wake up every day and work on something that actually matters,” said a 22-year-old apprentice called Chris.

Sky News was asked not to publish his surname for security reasons.

The workforce at AWE is expanding fast, with 1,500 new people joining over the past year.

The organisation has some 9,500 employees in total, including about 7,000 at Aldermaston, where the warhead is developed and its component parts are manufactured.

Designing and building a bomb is something the UK has not needed to do for decades – not since an international prohibition on testing nuclear weapons came into force in the 1990s.

It means the new warhead, called Astrea, will not be detonated for real unless it is used – an outcome that would only ever happen in the most extreme of circumstances as explained in a new podcast series by Sky News and Tortoise called The Wargame.

The last time, Britain test-fired a bomb was at a facility in Nevada in the US in 1991.

With that no longer an option, the scientists at AWE must rely on old data and new technology as they build the next generation of warhead.

This includes input from a supercomputer at the Aldermaston site that uses 17 megawatts of power and crunches four trillion calculations per second.

Another major help is a giant laser facility.

It is built in a hall, with two banks of long cylinders, lying horizontal and stacked one of top of the other running down the length of the room – these are part of the laser.

The beams are then zapped in a special, separate chamber, onto tiny samples of material to see how they react under the kind of extreme pressures and temperatures that would be caused in a nuclear explosion.

The heat is up to 10 million degrees – the same as the outer edge of the sun.

“You take all those beams at a billionth of a second, bring them altogether and heat a small target to those temperatures and pressures,” one scientist said, as he explained the process to John Healey, the defence secretary, who visited the site on Thursday.

Looking impressed, Mr Healey replied: “For a non-scientist that is hard to follow let alone comprehend.”

The Orion laser facility is the only one of its kind in the world, though the US – which has a uniquely close relationship with the UK over their nuclear weapons – has similar capabilities.

Maria Dawes, the director of science at AWE, said there is a sense of urgency at the organisation about the need to develop and then build the new bomb – which is a central part of the government’s new defence review published in early June.

“You’ve probably read the strategic defence review,” she said.

“There’s very much the rhetoric of this is a new era of threat and therefore it’s a new era for defence and AWE is absolutely at the heart of that and so a sense of urgency around: we need to step up and we need to make sure that we’ve got what our customer needs. Yes, there’s very much that sense here.”

It means an organisation that has for years been purely focused on ensuring the current stockpile of warheads is safe and works must shift to becoming more dynamic as it pursues a project that will be used to defend the UK long into the future.

In a sign of its importance, the government is spending £15bn over the next four years alone on the programme to build the new warheads.

Part of the investment is going into revamping Aldermaston.

Driving around the 700-acre site, which was once a Second World War airbase, many of the buildings were constructed into the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

The construction of new science and research laboratories is taking place.

But bringing builders onto one of the UK’s most secure nuclear sites is not without risk.

Everyone involved must be a British national and armed police patrols are everywhere.

No one would say what will be different about the new bomb that is being developed here compared with the version that needs replacing.

One official simply said the incumbent stock has a finite design life and will need to be swapped out.

UK

Asylum seekers come face-to-face with migrant hotel critics

Published

6 hours ago

September 12, 2025

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Asylum seekers come face-to-face with migrant hotel critics

“It makes me sad. We left when our country had the troubles so we should have in this world… the humanity”.

We’re sitting in a cafe in Tamworth and Noor, 19, is explaining how it feels to know there are people in the town who don’t want him here.

Noor is from Afghanistan and came to the UK on a small boat.

The cafe is close to the asylum hotel where he’s staying.

He’s agreed to come along with four other men from the hotel to speak to locals about the concern in the town over the Staffordshire hotel being used to house asylum seekers.

There was a peaceful demonstration outside the hotel last month. But last year, a protest here turned ugly. Windows were smashed, petrol bombs thrown, and part of the hotel was set alight.

Among the locals in the cafe is Tom, 25, who reveals he was at both protests.

He says he was persuaded to go by friends and explains to the group why they decided to go.

“They were annoyed, angry, fuming that the government had let them [asylum seekers] live in a hotel,” he says.

Noor, who speaks the best English of the asylum seekers in the group, replies: “What did we do wrong?”

“Your government accepts us as asylum seekers,” he continues.

Tom thinks. “I’m more annoyed with the government than you guys,” he tells them.

‘A place to get the golden ticket’

Noor explains to the group how he ended up in the UK. He left Afghanistan four years ago with his family but they were separated on the journey. He doesn’t know where they are.

Heather, a 29-year-old local accountant, speaks up.

“When people protest, I’m like, why don’t you protest near the government?” she asks. “Why don’t you take your issue to them rather than being outside the hotel?”

“Those asylum seekers aren’t going to change the policy at all,” she adds. “It’s just going to make them fearful.”

Each of the locals in the cafe has their own take on why some don’t like the asylum seekers living in their town.

“I think they feel like they’re living better than the British people, some of them, and it’s almost like they feel offended,” says Andrew, 47.

“Some people in the UK see how the asylum seekers are coming over to Britain because they see it as a place to get the golden ticket,” he adds.

Heather agrees. She says the NHS is a draw and the UK also has “different border control regulations that might be seen as weaker than in some other countries”.

“You get to stay in a hotel,” she tells the asylum seekers. “You get the free health care. And so I think that’s why they’re a little bit annoyed.”

Noor replies: “One thing I should tell you is that when we cross the English Channel, it means we don’t care about our life. It’s very dangerous.”

Links to the UK

I’m keen to know why they chose to come to Britain. Noor tells the group it’s because he has a relative here and speaks the language.

Azim, 22, who is also from Afghanistan, says he came here because people in the UK “have respect to Islam”.

He also has a family member here.

I ask them if they could have claimed asylum in France, but Noor says his “only hope was England”.

He says it’s “better for education” here. All the men agree it’s seen as the better place to come.

The conversation moves to the protests this summer which began in Epping, Essex, after an asylum seeker there was charged with sexually assaulting a schoolgirl – an offence he has now been convicted of.

Noor believes British people have a right to be angry about that. He tells the group he believes that asylum seekers who commit crimes “should get back to their country”.

“We also [do] not support them,” he says.

Over the course of the meeting, the mood becomes more relaxed. People with different views find some common ground.

Noor tells the group that if things improve in Afghanistan he would like to go back there one day.

If not, he hopes he’ll stay in the UK and earn enough to repay in taxes the bill for the hotel he’s staying in now.

It has been a frank exchange. Some in this town will never want asylum seekers here and people like Noor and Azim know it.

But they were placed here by the Home Office and can only wait until their asylum claims are processed.

UK

‘They’re in conditions you can’t even imagine’: Son of UK couple held in Iran renews plea for their release

Published

6 hours ago

September 12, 2025

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'They're in conditions you can't even imagine': Son of UK couple held in Iran renews plea for their release

“Mum is teaching yoga and English to her cellmates in Iranian prison.”

It’s now over eight months since British couple Lindsay and Craig Foreman were detained in Iran.

Last week, during a long-awaited visit from British ambassador Hugo Shorter, it was confirmed that the pair continue to endure tough conditions with no indication of how – or when – the legal process will proceed.

“They’re both coping, making the best of a bad situation. They’re in conditions you can’t even imagine.”

Speaking to Sky News, their son Joe Bennett explained how the couple have been crammed into cells with more than 50 other prisoners, while suffering constant back pain caused by metal bunk beds.

“The beds are stacked three high. It’s unsanitary. It’s hot. There are often power outages and they’re in 50-degree heat.”

Lindsay and Craig, both 52, were arrested in early January in Iran, as they crossed the country on motorbikes as part of an around-the-world adventure. The couple had left Spain just a few weeks earlier and were aiming to drive all the way to Australia.

They were charged with espionage and have been transferred to various prisons around Iran, with little information provided to British diplomatic staff about their whereabouts.

Joe and the rest of the family have only managed to speak to their parents once on the phone. “In a brief conversation that I had with my mum, we managed to share a laugh and a lot of tears as well. But it’s a test of time, how long they can keep this up for.”

The UK ambassador’s meeting with Craig was the first in over four months, and despite suffering from untreated dental pain, he quipped about becoming a “reluctant Arsenal supporter” while watching football on television with other prisoners.

The couple were previously held together in a facility in the Iranian city of Kerman but have been moved to separate prisons in the capital, Tehran. Family members are calling on the Iranians to move Lindsay into the same facility where Craig is being detained.

Their son acknowledged in his interview with Sky News that he was frustrated with his parents when they were arrested in January. Family members had urged them not to travel through the country.

“I had that natural reaction that some of the public do – why did they go? It’s idiotic, you’re going against the advice, and it serves them right. That’s fair enough when you don’t know them [but] just picture your parents having a bit of a sense of adventure… it’s a different story.”

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office says it is “deeply concerned” about the couple, adding, “we continue to raise this case directly with the Iranian authorities”.

Members of the Foreman family are urging the British government and the new foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, to take direct action to improve harsh prison conditions and urgently organise for Lindsay and Craig’s release.

“I need them home, you know, and I need them home as soon as possible. We need them, the family miss them dearly – so we’re going to do everything we can to make that possible.”

UK

No 10 appointed Mandelson despite security concerns, Sky News understands

Published

19 hours ago

September 11, 2025

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No 10 appointed Mandelson despite security concerns, Sky News understands

The security services expressed concern about the appointment of Lord Mandelson as ambassador to Washington, but No 10 went ahead anyway, Sky News understands.

Downing Street today defended the extensive vetting process which senior civil servants go through in order to get jobs, raising questions about whether or not they missed something or No 10 ignored their advice.

Politics Live: Mandelson sacked as US ambassador following ‘new information’

Sky News has been told by two sources that the security services did flag concerns as part of the process.

No 10 did not judge these concerns as enough to stop the ambassadorial appointment.

It is not known whether all of the detail was shared with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer personally.

Sky News has been told some members of the security services are unhappy with what has taken place in Downing Street.

Lord Mandelson is close to Sir Keir’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who is known to have been keen on the appointment – and the pair spoke regularly.

No 10 says the security vetting process is all done at a departmental level with no No 10 involvement.

Shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel described the revelations as “extraordinary”.

“For Keir Starmer, and his Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney, to have appointed Lord Mandelson despite concerns being raised by the security services shows a blatant disregard of all national security considerations and their determination to promote their Labour Party friends,” she said in a statement.

“Starmer leads a crisis riddled government consumed by a chaos of his own making, because he puts his Party before the needs of our country.

“The country deserves the honest truth this spineless prime minister refuses to give them.”

Lord Mandelson was sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US by Sir Keir earlier on Thursday over his ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The prime minister, who selected Lord Mandelson for the role, made the decision after new emails revealed the Labour peer sent messages of support to Epstein even as he faced jail for sex offences in 2008.

In one particular message, Lord Mandelson had suggested that Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged.

The Foreign Office said the emails showed “the depth and extent of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is materially different from that known at the time of his appointment”.

The decision to sack the diplomat was made by the prime minister and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on Thursday morning, Sky News understands.

This was after Sir Keir had reviewed all the new available information last night.

It comes after a string of allegations around the diplomat’s relationship with Epstein, which emerged in the media this week, including a 2003 birthday message in which he called the sex offender his “best pal”.

Further allegations were then published in The Telegraph on Wednesday morning, suggesting that Lord Mandelson had emailed Epstein to set up business meetings following the latter’s conviction for child sex offences in 2008.

Additional emails were then published detailing how the diplomat wrote to Epstein the day before he went to prison in June 2008 to serve time for soliciting sex from a minor. Lord Mandelson said: “I think the world of you.”