§ Mr. Hoyleasked the Prime Minister if, in the light of the evidence arising from the Australian Royal Commission into nuclear tests, she will seek to institute a Royal Commission fully to investigate all aspects, other than weapon design, of the events relating to and including the series of tests carried out between 3 October 1952 and 23 September 1958.
§ The Prime MinisterI have nothing to add to the statements made by my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Defence Procurement in reply to a question from the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Strang) on 22 November 1984, at column 225, and in the debate on 19 December 1984, at column 397.
§ Mr. Foulkesasked the Prime Minister if she will explain the nature of the triggering device to which she referred in her answer of 19 March, Official Report, columns 779–80, and of any contamination it was expected to produce.
§ The Prime MinisterI would like to stress once again that these matters were considered and the Wick site rejected over 30 years ago.
The device to which I referred in my answer of 19 March, at columns 779–80, is known as an initiator.
Its purpose was to produce neutrons to initiate the chain reaction which generates a nuclear explosion. Since only the initiator was being tested and it contained no fissile material there could never have been a nuclear explosion. The only source of contamination from the initiator was beryllium and radioactive polonium. The experiment was designed so as to avoid any environmental hazard, but was not proceeded with in the UK because the site was judged to be unsuitable and because conditions in Australia offered a greater certainty of achieving this.