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British Defence chiefs have admitted servicemen were exposed to dangerous radiation levels during nuclear tests in Australia and the South Pacific in the 1950s.
But a New Zealand veterans advocate has dismissed the admission as a token gesture, which goes nowhere towards satisfying a claim for compensation by sailors here.
The Sunday Mirror reported yesterday that court papers show the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) now believes - after years of denials - that nuclear tests were responsible for the deaths of some British servicemen.
However, the MoD insists that only 159 men were affected out of the 20,000 who were present.
About 800 former servicemen from Britain, New Zealand and Fiji launched a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the MoD this year, claiming they had been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation during tests at sites including Maralinga in South Australia and Christmas Island.
The court documents show two Royal Air Force servicemen, Eric Denson and John Brothers, were irradiated after being ordered to fly through the mushroom clouds of nuclear bombs to collect samples.
Film badges worn by the men recorded the amount of radiation they were exposed to. "Eric had a dose equivalent to 190 years of background radiation," the newspaper said. "John's was 107. The MoD's maximum safe dose was just 30."
About 550 New Zealand sailors on board the frigates HMNZS Pukaki and HMNZS Rotoiti were at the series of nine aerial bomb explosions at Christmas Island in the Pacific and Malden Island, part of Kiribati, beginning on May 15, 1957.
There are thought to be about 160 left alive.
The sailors, banded together as the New Zealand Nuclear Test Veterans Association, are part of the class action lawsuit.
The chairman of the association, Roy Sefton, who suffers from muscle and skeletal pain that he is certain is a result of being exposed to the testing, said the admission was laughable.
"It's rubbish. I don't know how many, but there have been many thousands exposed. It's not even within the realms of reality. It's a token gesture.
"You wouldn't have all these men 20 nautical miles from ground zero if it wasn't for some sort of purpose, to see how they reacted."
Mr Sefton said British defence chiefs wanted to play the incident down because Britain wanted to upgrade its nuclear power stations and build new ones.
- AAP
