Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:20 pm on 23 May 2018.
Okay. Well, it's a fact that the dumping of mud will allow the nuclear power station to be built, so what is Wales getting out of it? What are we getting out of this deal? The answer is a big fat zero—dim byd, nothing, nada, nothing at all. So, England is dumping its nuclear mud on Wales, and this Government is accepting it—this Labour Government in Wales. I'm almost speechless. How can that be allowed to happen? If it's so safe, dump it in the Thames. If nuclear energy is so safe, locate those reactors in the south-east of England.
Now, let's look—[Interruption.] London. Let's look at the precautionary principle, as mentioned earlier, because according to the European Commission, the precautionary principle can be invoked when the full risk is not known. Now, the truth of this matter is that nobody—nobody—in this Chamber knows if this mud is safe. Nobody knows. It's worth repeating that the testing was done below 5 cm, 300,000 tonnes of mud, and just five—five—samples taken in 2009, and that the raw data has been disposed of, as I said earlier. Only gamma testing was done. Now, scientists advise me that some types of plutonium don't give out gamma. And if you look at Kosovo, the testing done in the mud there—they've done three types of testing, which are alpha spectrometry, plasma mass spectrometry and the one type of spectrometry carried out on the mud outside Hinkley Point. So, what is good enough for Kosovo should be good enough for Wales.
Also, if you look at the figures on the data given from 2009, Natural Resources Wales are wrong, they're simply incorrect, because if you look at the data, it's there in black and white: there is an increase in radioactivity the lower you go. If you look at the data from 2015, if you apply the difference, then you could be getting beyond the de minimis above safe levels. I met with Natural Resources Wales in September and, to be perfectly frank, they could give me virtually no answers to the questions I posed. They knew nothing about the testing regime and they knew nothing about where the mud was going to end up. It's deplorable that the agency looking after the environment in Wales has no expertise—no expertise—in these matters. If this material is unsafe—and I say 'if' it's unsafe—those particles will travel 10 miles inland—10 miles inland.
So, I think it's very reasonable—reasonable—to say, 'Retest the mud.' It will cost £100,000 out of a £40,000 million project. It's absolutely a reasonable thing to ask, and I ask that the Minister directs NRW to suspend the licence until retesting is done. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask. Diolch yn fawr.