Episode 1 Inside Out

Over the next few weeks, we'll be bringing you in-depth

reports on some of the best stories from around England.

In Plymouth, we'll be hearing from the residents living

with a nuclear waste dump in their neighbourhood.

Could thousands of jobs have been saved in Redcar?

And in Essex, we will be meeting the pianist scaling the heights

Who would want to live next to a nuclear waste graveyard?

Here in the south-west of England, a quarter of a million

And nobody has ever really asked for their say-so.

Scott Bingham investigates the reasons for 25 years

of radioactive dumping here at Devonport dockyard

And asks why an end is still not in sight.

Every Monday morning at 11.30am, the Navy test the siren it would use

People living here close to Devonport dockyard have

But they hope this is the only time they will ever get to hear it.

May God bless her and all who serve in her.

The launch in 1960 of the first of Britain's fleet

Their maintenance at Devonport dockyard has become a mainstay

But each contains tonnes of radioactive steel and nuclear

fuel and the problem that has never been solved completely is what to do

Originally the Navy planned to send the vessels, minus their fuel,

Right up until 1989 when it gave evidence to the House

of Commons Defence Committee and also in 1991 it still held out

that dumping, scuttling submarines, was a perfectly legitimate approach.

It was ruled completely above board and since then there has been

an absolute saga of indecisiveness, ineptitude and really,

quite frankly, lost in the desert on behalf of the MoD and the Royal

It is an issue which has long caused controversy,

like the protests which greeted retiring HMS Conqueror

when she sailed into Devonport for the last time.

Campaigners made a grim prediction about the fate

Are we going to be faced with seeing, in ten years' time,

HMS Conqueror still moored up with two or three submarines

Even they never imagined that 25 years later,

Conqueror would still be moored at Devonport and that she would be

joined by 11 more retired and contaminated subs.

So why has Plymouth ended up with this radioactive graveyard?

The most dangerous part of the submarine is its radioactive

In the early days that was removed and sent by train to Sellafield in

But in 2002, the nuclear safety regulator ruled that the method used

So eight of the retired subs still have that fuel on board.

A new facility is now being built at Devonport.

When completed, it will sit above the retired subs allowing

access to their reactor compartments.

Their fuel will then be removed and sent on its 400 mile rail

The contaminated vessels which house the fuel could also

But where that would end up is unclear.

The Government wants to create an underground storage site

A hugely controversial idea that is decades

In the meantime, are the subs and their contents a risk?

The MoD did not want to be interviewed for this film

and in a statement it said retired subms are stored safely and securely

under a strict schedule of maintenance and inspection.

John Large is an internationally renowned nuclear consultant.

He says the mere fact of where the subs are breaks

a fundamental rule of nuclear safety.

The first rule of nuclear power is to separate the radioactivity

from the public and that is done in two ways.

One by containment structures and the second is to keep

Of course, you break that rule in Devonport because the public,

250,000 or so souls in Plymouth, are crowned around

If and when refuel work restarts on the retired submarines,

it will be in a part of the dockyard currently under

They were imposed by the nuclear safety regulator, worried

about ageing facilities and safety breaches.

But the local MP insists there is no significant risk.

You can never eliminate risk completely.

I do think they have done everything physically possible to do

so and I think it is important we communicate that to the people

who live here and so that we can allay concerns that they have got.

Most safety procedures at Devonport are concerned with day-to-day

working practices within the dockyard.

But one expert believes recent events have reinforced the need

to also be prepared for acts of sabotage.

A well-planned incident, which could include terrorist

attack, of course can actually release energy

From the way in which the nuclear fuel is encased, the particular

materials used can produce gases like hydrogen that can create

extreme and severe damage to all levels of containment

and release the radio nucleids, the toxicity, from the fuel

into the atmosphere to come down over a town.

The MoD said it is simply not credible that such

13 years ago, two antinuclear protesters did manage to break

They climbed on board a sub before they were discovered.

At the moment there is a heightened terror threat against the UK,

as far as I am aware, there is nothing specific

against the dockyard but the alert state is extremely high and I know

that everyone who works down there, it is their number one priority.

They take it very seriously. However unlikely it may be,

how would Plymouth cope if the siren went off for real?

If you live close to Devonport dockyard, then you will have been

given one of these leaflets which tells you what to do

The advice is to go indoors, stay indoors and to tune into local

I took to the streets of Keyham, a stone's throw from the dockyard,

to find out whether locals trusted that advice.

If there is a threat, I would probably jump in my car

To be quite honest, I think that is what I would do.

The advice is to go in and stay inside and tune into local radio

or television, is that what you would do?

I used to work on nuclear submarines.

So I would not be particularly worried that there would be a major

The dockyard has seen its fair share of antinuclear demonstrations over

the years but the number of people taking part has only amounted

to a fraction of the thousands who turned out in 1993 to support

the successful bid from Devonport to win a big subs refit contract.

A reflection, perhaps, of the continuing importance

of the dockyard to the city's economy.

It is vital to what we are trying to do here in Plymouth in terms

of regenerating and rebuilding our economy.

We have always been a naval city and I am proud of that heritage

The dismantling of Devenport's growing collection of retired subs

Whatever happens, these boats with their radioactive contents

They talk about the situation at Devonport lasting for another

In many ways, Devonport has been assigned its notoriety

of being a radioactive waste dump for many a year to come.

It's been two months since the blast furnace was extinguished

But could the steel plant and at least some of the 2000 jobs

Some have argued the Government could and should have done more.

Our reporter, Chris Jackson, has been to Italy to find out how

in the face of global fierce competition, the Tuscans are keeping

More than 2,000 jobs went with the collapse of SSI.

Many more suffered the knock-on effects.

But could more have been done to save the plant?

I've come to Italy to find some answers.

It's a working-class town, a busy little place

And at the heart of this community, the local steelworks.

A port town with a steelworks - sounds familiar?

Piombino is almost exactly the size of Redcar.

They both have populations of 35,000 and everyone depends on steel.

Mauro Macceloni has worked at the steel factory for 21 years.

Did you think it was a job for life when you started?

TRANSLATION: Yes, I thought I would be there for

I entered the plant when I was 24 years old.

I thought I would be there until I retire.

In 2012, Mauro and his family were rocked by the news

TRANSLATION: My friends have parents that work in the plant

I pretend the problem is not there and I tend not to think

about it, but I am worried and what I don't like is that

But unlike the plight of the families back on Teesside,

Even though back in 2012, the future of the plant hung

in the balance, the Russian owners couldn't make the plant profitable

Massimo Giulliani was Mayor of Piombino at the time.

What would have happened had it closed, do you think?

TRANSLATION: This was a question we asked ourselves often and we have

Thousands of families, those near and close by,

would have found themselves without anything.

There would have been no development.

It would have been a very difficult moment for our town.

So what happened to allay the mayor's worst fears?

Well, the Tuscan government stepped in.

It put the plant into special measures and a commissioner

If it hadn't been for that political intervention some four years ago,

then the steelworks here in Piombino would have faced the same

Many of the plant's 2,000 workers were sent home but

Wages dropped from 1,400 euros a month to 900,

TRANSLATION: We had to find an agreement at this time.

They are working under a solidarity contract.

There has been a reduction of working hours and salary.

I've come to Florence to meet the architect

Enrico Rossi is the Governor of Tuscany.

It's very important for Europe to produce steel, because Europe

is a continent where the industry, where the manufacturing,

is very important and steel is an instrument for production.

In order to attract a new buyer for the plant, Enrico's regional

government and the national government put together a package

to plough more than 150 million euros into the factory.

Another 140 million euros was found to improve the port.

In all, that is more than ?200 million.

The steel plant has now been bought by an Algerian businessman who has

taken on all of the workers and is investing another

At the moment, the plant is making railway lines and high

Some of the money pumped into Piombino has been used

to update the production process with new, greener, technology.

Just as in Redcar, they have now turned out the light

The difference here is they are going to build

The workers believe in the restart of this plant.

That it is good for the user and the life of the town.

So how have the Italians managed to keep their plans on track?

The UK Government ruled out similar help for Redcar because they said it

would break European rules which forbid state aid.

All of your intervention did not break any European

You can explain your reasons, you can discuss with Europe.

In conclusion, we save occupations, we save the works, the steelworks

"Sea people, made of steel," the motto of AC Piombino.

As with any steel town, here in Piombino, they like to work

And whilst the team here might not have any lessons for the borough,

potentially there are things that people on Teesside might

want to learn from the experiences here.

Back home, Redcar steelworks lies dormant and most of its former

The case study that you've found in Italy shows exactly

So European rules, state aid considerations, are just

Actually, what is stopping saving SSI in Redcar was political

will and a real appreciation that steel matters in a modern economy,

that you need to have steel as the very foundation of a modern

So they have got the political will in Italy, we haven't in Britain.

I think they are wrong, in this sense.

The problem with SSI is they made one product.

Slab had almost halved in price and the deal, if you like,

was that SSI would make it on Redcar and then export it to

Thailand and unfortunately, if you were to look at that

model in cold light, unfortunately, in those

circumstances, it was never going to work and it didn't work.

But were you actually knocking on the door of Europe and saying,

look, we have a real problem here, is there anything we can do?

First of all, I can assure you, my officials did not leave any stone

unturned in looking at what could and couldn't be done,

but what should the Government have done?

It's not my money, it's your viewers' money and it was losing

hundreds of millions of pounds and it always had done.

But in Italy, we have seen the example where

No, because it is not a like-for-like industry.

SSI was a blast furnace and it made slab, which it exported to Thailand.

The company you talk about in Italy, I understand, its blast

Now they may say, we are going to open them.

But what the Italians will say, nonetheless, they still have a works

and they hope to have a furnace again and what they are saying

is that you really can fight your corner in Europe

Let's get it clear, anyone who says I didn't fight,

And with all the political will, which I had huge bucketloads of,

I can't fix, no government can fix the worldwide price of steel,

the overproduction and the under consumption, however

As the political arguments rumble on, the next question is who pays

the ?1 billion estimated to decontaminate the site?

Now over to Inside Out East for the inspirational story

of pianist Nicholas McCarthy from Essex.

Nicholas was born with only one hand but despite this,

he is a rising star in the world of classical music.

But now, he faces one of his toughest challenges yet.

To play Ravel's concerto for the left hand.

David Whiteley joins him for preparations

Pianist Nicholas McCarthy is just days away from taking on the biggest

challenge of his professional career.

Nicholas, who only has one hand, is going to perform one

of the hardest pieces of music he has ever tackled.

This concerto is one of my most favourite concertos

and it is actually the first time a one-handed pianist has played

So it is a big challenge for me, and something which

But also really excited about as well.

Nicholas will be playing Ravel's concerto for the left hand.

London's Royal College of Music is where the very best young

musicians come to learn their craft, and where Nicholas was a student.

He has come to talk through the piece with his old tutor.

The technical challenges of this piece are huge.

It is a really difficult concerto and I remember the first time I ever

opened the score for the first time my jaw dropped.

There is a lot of black notes on that page and a lot of work

This moment especially always scares me slightly.

Yes, that is exactly a case in point, where you have

not got time to cover, you have just literally

got to see what you're going and learn the distance.

The interval just get so big, doesn't it?

It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and so whenever I finish

There are around 600 pieces of left-hand piano music available

Quite a bit of that is thanks to a wealthy Austrian concert

pianist who lost his right arm in the First World War.

He decided to use his position in society and his wealth

to commission all the famous names of the day, Ravel,

Benjamin Britten, and paid them vast amounts of money.

65 years ago, Wittgenstein played this concerto at the Royal Albert

Hall but it has never been played in public

That is Nicholas' challenge when he plays at a concert in Kent

Incredibly, an old friend of his was at that

So the last time you were here was in 1951, when you saw one

We were up there in the gallery, half a crown seats then,

He wasn't the world's best player. He came on.

Bowed to the audience, off it went.

Nicholas is the star attraction for this evening's concert.

It is the first time he has played with the Kent Sinfonia.

It really takes a great musical personality to master this

It is almost impossible to play the way that Ravel has written it.

It must be, I suppose, to bring it off, one of the hardest

When those doors open onto the stage and I see that audience,

that is when the magic happens and a 90 minute concert, for me,

Thoughts of when I heard it played before.

Wittgenstein was not much of a pianist.

To have that applause at the end, to know that you have done a good

job and the audience have enjoyed it, because that is what they are

As performers, we want them to be there to enjoy something that

potentially they might not have heard before.

If you would like to see more stories from your area,

join the Inside Out team on Monday evening at 7:30pm on BBC One

We have a fairly quiet weekend of weather and mild for the time of