Nancekuke Portreath Cornwall UK - Military Installations on Waymarking.com

The United Kingdom’s investigations into the military possibilities of organophosphorous compounds received an enormous post-war impetus from the stockpile of captured German nerve agent and research documents concerning Tabun and Sarin. Sarin was quickly identified as the most suitable agent for the UK services and by 1950 development was sufficiently advanced for limited production to begin. It was clear that the Chemical Defence Establishment at Porton Down was unsuitable for this work due to its proximity to large centres of population and industry. A new, remote location was therefore sought and the abandoned coastal airfield at Portreath in the sparsely populated area of the Cornish peninsula was considered ideal.

The site was taken over by the Ministry of Supply and renamed CDE Nancekuke. Added security was introduced with a new 9’ high wire mesh perimeter fence and the closing of all approach roads. At that time there was virtually no public knowledge of the work and the non-scientific workers employed to build the plant were not told of its intended use. It was intended that the huge site, extending to several hundred acres, should initially be home to a small scale Sarin production plant under-taking process research work, but plans were already being prepared to build a vast, fully automated Sarin production and weapon-filling plant there.

CDE Nancekuke began operating as a small-scale chemical agent production and research facility in 1951. CDE Nancekuke operated 3 sites: North Site, Central Site and South Site. A pilot production facility was built on North Site to support the research, development and production of a nerve agent known as Sarin (GB) and Nancekuke became the prime centre in the UK for production and storage. Production at this plant commenced in 1954 and continued until 1956. During this period it produced sufficient Sarin (GB) to prove the process and to meet the requirements for assessment trials and the testing of defensive equipment under development at Porton Down. Subsequently, international tension relaxed to the point where it was not judged necessary to proceed with a production plant and production ceased in 1956 by which time a stockpile of some 20 tons had been accumulated.

CDE NANCEKUKE FROM 1956

From then on, work at Nancekuke concentrated on the small-scale production of chemicals and agents to support the UK’s defensive research programme which was being directed from Porton Down. Between 1956 and the late 1970s, CDE Nancekuke was used for the production of riot control agents such as CS gas which was manufactured on an industrial scale from about 1960. The CS plant produced the agent on a batch process at the rate of 30 kg per day with some 33-35 tons being manufactured in total. Nancekuke was increasingly involved with the development of medical countermeasures, training aids, and the development of charcoal cloth for use in protective Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) suits used by the British Forces.

CHEMICAL CLOSURE AND DISPERSAL

In 1976, a defence review recommended the transfer of remaining work to CDE Porton Down, and the decision to begin decommissioning CDE Nancekuke was taken. A team of international inspectors oversaw the decommissioning process and the site is still open to inspection by members of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

All remaining stocks of chemical agents were destroyed or transferred to Porton Down between 1976 and 1978. Some chemicals were either neutralized on site or returned to the commercial chemical industry, but a considerable volume was buried on site along with debris from dismantled plant and buildings. At the time, this was considered to be an environmentally acceptable procedure. Material was dumped in five clearly defined and widely separated locations within the boundary of the Nancekuke site. One site was an old quarry some 40 or 50 feet in depth, this was filled with rubble and steelwork from the demolished factory along with similar material from surviving Second World War airfield buildings that had been reused for chemical purposes. Close to the cliff edge four specially excavated pits each 2 metres in depth were excavated and filled with waste chemicals from the factory. Nearby, the ground level of a shallow valley leading to the cliff edge was raised by about 20 feet by the deposition of building rubble, waste chemicals and quantities of asbestos from demolished buildings. More worryingly, two deep, long-abandoned tin mine shafts within the factory perimeter were used to dump surplus equipment from the Sutton Oak research establishment at the time that its function was transferred to Nancekuke. The problem with landfill is that what goes under the ground inevitably comes out in the water. Currently, in the United Kingdom, the problems of serious ground and water contamination from buried military waste are having to be addressed. The only safe solution is to recover these contaminants and treat them by chemical or physical means to ensure that their future environmental impact will be neutral. To comply with current legislation the site is now being cleaned up under the Nancekuke Remediation Project This process has just begun at the time of writing and is expected to be completed by the end of the decade. The CDE moved out in 1978 and the station reverted to the Ministry of Defence as a radar station.

Ref:https://www.subbrit.org.uk/sites/portreath-reporting-post/

Era: Post WW II General Comments: The site was established during the cold war, has since been decommissioned. Related web site: [Web Link]

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Date Logged Log User Rating   06/10/2019 MoreOutdoor visited it