Written question asked by Nick Harvey (Liberal Democrat) on Thursday, 18 December 2008, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 12 January 2009. It was answered by Lord Beamish (Labour) on Tuesday, 13 January 2009 on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.

Nuclear Weapons: Testing

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how long the 2005 decontamination exercise on Kiritimati took; and how much the exercise cost, broken down by category of expenditure.

Answer

The contract works on the island commenced during January 2005 and the last package of waste left the Island in May 2008, although most of the scrap metal had been removed by November 2006.The costs of removing the waste (not necessarily decontamination) currently amount to £7.0 million broken down as follows (figures are rounded):

	£ million
General items (insurance, mobilisation, provision of compound)	3.0
Whole island tasks (removal of asbestos, radiological survey and known radium luminised dials)	0.5
Waste removal (vehicles and plant, tanks, boilers drums and bitumen spills, asphalt plant, coral crushing plant, and bunkers)	2.5
Shipping and disposal	1.0

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 486 c558-9W; 246875
Session: 2008-09
Subjects: Contamination Nuclear weapons Testing Christmas Island
Contains statistics: Yes
Link: View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk

Nuclear Weapons: Testing

Secondary information

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