Rob GarrattMilitary personnel from both sides of the Atlantic will today join with Norfolk's emergency services to play out their response to any future nuclear accident on the region's soil.Rob Garratt

Military personnel from both sides of the Atlantic will today join with Norfolk's emergency services to play out their response to any future nuclear accident on the region's soil.

Two days of drills will take place, today at RAF Sculthorpe, near Fakenham, and tomorrow at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk. Residents in mid-Norfolk should be able to glimpse military helicopters and emergency service vehicles arriving at Sculthorpe this morning.

A spokesman for the MoD said the county was chosen for the routine training, which takes place every two or three years, because it lies on a flight path for planes carrying nuclear weapons.

This week's exercises will see the US and British military working with Norfolk police and fire crews, the East Anglian Ambulance Service and Norfolk County Council.

Today, about 100 people across the agencies will take part in a field-based practical exercise, with tomorrow devoted to a table-top exercise.

Activists from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament are planning to campaign at the military bases.

In June 1999, more than 1,100 Anglo-American armed and emergency services played out a similar scenario in an exercise called Operation Dimming Sun.

The re-enactment, on Ministry of Defence land at Wretham, near Thetford, saw blood-splattered victims rushed away from the devastation to hospital while scientists clad in boiler suits began the containment process.

A MoD spokeswoman said: "The aim of the exercise is to test the MoD, US Immediate Response Force and civil emergency response interactions, inter-operability and co-operation in the extremely unlikely event of an accident involving a US Air Force aircraft carrying US nuclear weapons.

"No radioactive contaminants will be used during the exercise and members of the public will not be affected."