A NERVE centre which will be used to co-ordinate responses in the aftermath of a nuclear accident in or around the Clyde Submarine Base at Faslane was opened officially yesterday.

The Clyde Off Site Centre (COSC) at Rhu, near the base which will be home to the Vanguard-class submarines, will provide facilities for emergency services and other agencies which previously may have operated from their own command bases.

It is not located underground, made of reinforced concrete, or equipped with fortified steel doors. Neither are protective suits on hand for staff who will draw up measures to safeguard the public in the event of a radiation leak.

The centre, contained in Rhu Hangars, is an insignificant corrugated metal construction covering an area the size of Hampden Park, and ringed by a wire security fence.

The building, operated by the Army until January 1994, was converted at a cost of #250,000 after ownership was transferred to the Royal Navy. It is modelled on the Scottish Nuclear Off Site Centre at East Kilbride.

The ground floor area provides accommodation for several mobile Emergency Monitoring Headquarters vehicles, and contains a mini-grandstand - to seat 250 media personnel - for briefings and conferences in the event of a nuclear accident.

A series of mezzanine offices will accommodate personnel who will co-ordinate responses in the event of a nuclear accident or radiation leak.

Here, it is planned, officials from HM Naval Base Clyde's Nuclear Accident Response Organisation would advise Strathclyde Police - which would co-ordinate any response - and other emergency services and agencies on counter-measures that may be required for safeguarding the public.

Agencies represented would include Argyll and Bute Council, the Scottish Office, health boards, the National Radiological Protection Board, and central Government departments.

Opening the facility yesterday, Rear Admiral John Tolhurst CB, Flag Officer Scotland, Northern England, and Northern Ireland, said there had never been an accident involving military nuclear assets which had posed a hazard to the public.

He added: ``We aim to keep it that way and are confident that the application of our stringent safety procedures will continue to be effective in preventing such an accident. It is a most unlikely event.''

He said COSC was an ``imaginative development'' which was ``at least as good'' as any established by the civil nuclear industry.

The civil nuclear and chemical industries reviewed their methods of managing the response to accidents and established new command and control arrangements, known as ``off-site centres'', during the 1980s.

These involve emergency services and other agencies assembling to deal with an accident.

Lieutenant Iain Dell, the Royal Navy's nuclear emergency planning officer at Faslane, yesterday rejected a suggestion that COSC was merely paying lip-service to the public.

He said: ``Much of the real money has been spent in engineering-out potential problems.''

Asked if it was realistic to expect that personnel would remain at the centre in the event of a nuclear accident, he said: ``It would be hard to envisage a scenario where we would have to evacuate to any significant distance from the base.

``The potential does not exist at the base which could lead to a repeat of Chernobyl.''

A ``highly successful'' exercise held on April 30, to demonstrate the capabilities of the facility, which involved local authority emergency services, is likely to be repeated in the near future.