The fog of confusion around Dounreay is as impenetrable as ever and there is no point in the prime minister accusing others of alarming the public by asking questions. The alarming element in all of this is the incompetence and secrecy of Dounreay historically and it is compounded by Mr Blair's apparent belief that it is irresponsible to try to discover the truth. The prime minister's statement in the Commons deserves some close textual analysis. He insists that no material of the sort in question has been stolen from Dounreay or fallen into terrorist or criminal hands, but nobody has seriously suggested any such thing. He says further that no material has been sent from Dounreay for UK weapons purposes. This is possibly true, but material could have been sent from Dounreay for further treatment elsewhere before ending up in UK weapons.

Mr Blair's testimony should be regarded with caution. The statement of the chief executive of the Atomic Energy Authority is simply incredible. The ''lost'' material was not lost, he says. It never existed because those logging material into Dounreay years ago must have made an arithmetical mistake. Yet his own agency says in a report that it is either in the notorious shaft or in the plant or both. As is well known, the material was of enormous value in the late sixties, and the proposition that the huge sum of 170kg was noted down wrongly defies sense.

Dounreay does not have a good reputation to recover and current and potential examinations of the plant will not accomplish that impossible task. We have always argued that the workforce has decommissioning skills which should be marketed internationally, and that continues to make sense. We have said the widening and development of the local economy to embrace other industries is long overdue and, as if by magic, the Scottish Office announced a significant hi-tech development in Thurso yesterday which will bring many skilled jobs. The level of government investment in this project is unusually high and may yet run foul of EU regulations but it is very welcome, especially if it signals the end of Dounreay as a reprocessing plant.