Result!
This probably doesn’t mean much to anyone but me and the other Plymothians who’ve vociferously protested Halliburton’s involvement in running Devonport’s nuclear dockyard over the years (and who’ve been surveilled, harsssed and arrested and who now have MI5 files for our trouble).
Just to give some idea of what exact Halliburton practices we were protesting against here’s an excerpt from my 2002 blogpost about the way nuclear fuels are stored and handled at the Dockyard by Halliburton’s subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root:
Even a very minor breach of a reactor container on a sub would affect people within a 2km radius… DEVPUBSAFE allows for a 550m radius. Co-incidentally this is the average radius of the Dockyard.
Most likely to be affected in a minor accident are children. There is a primary school 440 m from the Dockyard. I’ve been told by a local NUT rep that teachers have been ordered that if there is an incident, they must lock the doors and not let any parents in or children out. DEVPUBSAFE says “Don?t try to collect children from school. Their teachers will make sure that they are looked after.” If your children were in danger from by a nuclear accident, would a locked door stop *you*?
A major incident, ie a total hull breach, fire/explosion and leakage of fissionable material, could potentailly affect an area of 50km circumference. That’s Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset.
[DEVPUBSAFE is the civil nuclear emergency plan, which at that time was funded only to the level of 10,000 pounds]
So you can imagine this news that KBR may lose the dockyard cheered me up no end. It’s not the end of the matter, but it’s a start.
Britain has made a last-minute demand that Halliburton, the US oil services group, withdraw the imminent flotation of its KBR subsidiary or face being stripped of its ownership of the Devonport naval dockyard.
Halliburton had intended to price the offering of KBR on Tuesday night, with its market debut scheduled for Wednesday. However, as reported in the Financial Times last week, Lord Drayson, the British defence procurement minister, has been seeking urgent guarantees from Halliburton about the future financial viability of KBR before giving his support to the float.
Ha! Up yours, Cheney. Excuse me, I have to go do a very small victory lap. Slowly slowly, incrementally, is the way to win against globalised militaristic capitalism. Or that’s what iI tell myself because if it weren’t for these small victories it’d be tempting to give in to despair.
So yay for us pinko lefties, and yay for the beautiful county of Devon.
Read more: Halliburton, KBR, Trident, Plymouth, Devonport, Dockyard, Nuclear weapons, DML
