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The Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston (formerly the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, Aldermaston) is situated in the UK, just 7 miles north of Basingstoke and approximately 14 miles south-west of Reading, Berkshire, near a village called Aldermaston, bordering with Tadley.
Other Atomic Weapons Establishment sites could be found at Burghfield and Cardiff, the former Royal Ordnance Factories, although Cardiff is now closed.
The main output of this facility is that of plutonium fissile materials for the use in nuclear warheads. The site was formerly a US Airbase during in the Second World War, and then was retained for government use for the research and production of nuclear weapons, to put the UK in the league of nations who possess nuclear arms.
AWE is responsible for the design, manufacture, support and decommissioning of the UK's nuclear arsenal. Recently the facility has dismantled the WE177 nuclear bomb and produced the warheads for the UK's Trident missiles. The UK government is committed to ensuring that AWE can produce a next generation nuclear weapon, should that be necessary.
The plant is the final destination for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's annual march from Trafalgar Square, London.
Management
In 1993 control of the plant was handed from Central Government to the Hunting-Brae company. During Hunting Brae's management AWE decommissioned the RAF's WE177 freefall nuclear bomb. In 1998 the company suffered two prosecutions for safety breaches, one for discharge of tritium into a nearby stream and another for an incident where two workers inhaled plutonium.
In 1999 the company lost the contract to AWE Management Ltd, (AWE ML) a consortium of BNFL, Lockheed Martin UK and Serco which assumed responsibility on April 1 2000. Having won the contract AWE ML became the owner of AWE plc which is reponsbile for the day-to-day operations of AWE. This does not represent privitisation, the Ministry of Defence still owns all the AWE sites and a golden share in AWE plc. Critics have pointed out that BNFL and Lockheed Martin do not have perfect safety records either. BNFL has suffered embarrassing revelations of falsified quality checks in nuclear fuels and Lockheed has been the subject of scathing reports on the operation of U.S. nuclear facilities. Lockheed's failings include safety concerns at the Y-12 facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, an American weapons plant similar in certain ways to Aldermaston.
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