Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:31 pm on 2 April 2019.
I thank the Member for that question. I can say to him quite straightforwardly that the advice that I have received is that geological disposal of radioactive waste is a matter for the Welsh Government in Wales, and I've never seen anything put to me that suggests that there's any ambiguity about where responsibility for that lies. That is why we published our document on 25 January, which was a Welsh-specific document.
Now, the position we have set out is the one that Llyr Gruffydd referred to, in which we say that the only way in which geological disposal of radioactive waste in Wales could take place would be if a community itself came forward with that proposition. The local authority within which that community lies also has rights under the policy that we have proposed, and a local authority could declare that it does not want to see any geological disposal within its local authority boundaries, and that would override anything that that local community might say. So, it is entirely in the hands of local people and local authorities as to whether or not this would go ahead, and the Welsh Government quite certainly has not identified any sites or communities, and we have no intention of doing so.