The Ministry of Defence has been attacked over ‘unacceptable’ delays during a simulated nuclear accident.

Exercise Senator tested more than 1,000 personnel at HMS Gannet in Ayrshire on their response to a catastrophic radioactive explosion.

But an official report found a specialist team took more than five hours to reach the scene of the simulated disaster.

Anti-nuclear campaigners said if it had really happened, Scotland would be ‘left to fend for itself’.

The trial and test-run was carried out by the MoD at Prestwick Airport in September 2011. Participants from 21 agencies were told there had been an accident involving a truck carrying nuclear warheads on the M74. The simulation was such that the warheads had caught fire and were leaking radioactive material into the air.

In its official report the MoD said the response time was ‘not adequate’, while the treatment of casualties was ‘disorganised’.

There was a ‘considerable delay’ in forming a plan to manage patients exposed to radioactivity and ‘significant further delay’ in sending paramedics.

The report states that, as a result, a seriously injured casualty who may have survived would have died.

The MoD is being urged to take the outcomes of this failed exercise very seriously and for it to work more closely and responsibly with local authorities and the emergency services to resolve a number of planning gaps.