2. Business Statement and Announcement

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:41 pm on 18 September 2018.

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Photo of Neil McEvoy Neil McEvoy Independent 2:41, 18 September 2018

Leader of the Chamber, the latest scientist to say that, in the interests of health and safety, the dredging and dumping of mud from the seabed outside of Hinkley Point nuclear power station should stop is Emeritus Professor Keith Barnham, distinguished research fellow of the physics department, Imperial College London. He is a high energy particle physicist—they used to call them nuclear physicists. He says, and he said yesterday on the record in a press conference, that the hot particles of uranium and plutonium—which could be in the mud because of the incidents in the 1960s, which Magnox have confirmed—that they would not be detected by gamma spectroscopy, which was the only way that the mud was tested. So, in layman's terms, there was only gamma testing; there should have been alpha testing and mass spectrometry as well. So, a very simple question and I'd like an answer or statement off the Government: is this eminent professor, another scientist—? Could you give us a statement on if he is correct, is he scientifically correct? That's all we want to know.