And what are we to make of the next statement?
Environmental measurements were usually below the limit of detection. On the few occasions when radioactivity above this limit was detected the levels were low, decayed or dispersed rapidly, and did not constitute a hazard or danger to test participants, visitors or inhabitants of the island.
What they are clearly trying not to say is that after all the denials and assurances by ministers to the contrary there was radioactive contamination on Christmas Island even if it was “low or decayed.” But the next statement contradicts even that slippery assurance when it concedes there was
a single enhanced measurement of 2.8 microcurie per square metre” found at Main Camp 32 hours after one of the detonations. This was slightly above the recommended limit of 1 microcuries per square metre.
It was in fact nearly three times the recommended limit, which some would argue was a lot more than “slightly above.” But this important distinction pales into insignificance when considered alongside the next staggering announcement
A few very high values (up to 300 microcuries per square metre after extrapolation back to one hour after detonation) were recorded from the uninhabited southern parts of the island, none of which was nearer than 8 km from the nearest inhabited area.
In the space of a few short paragraphs we have moved from the definitive “below the limit of detection” on to “slightly above the recommended limit” to arrive at “a few very high values of 300 microcuries per square metre!
Let us be clear: this measurement was 300 times the recommended safe limit which was just 1 microcuries per square metre… by any standards a very serious contamination.
Remember: the Christmas Island bombs were all supposed to have been “clean” because they were exploded too high in the air to cause any fallout. This astonishing document makes a nonsense of all that.
To find such high concentrations of radiation just a few miles from inhabited areas is a very grave situation.
Radioactive contamination does not recognise borders, and if it had already travelled 20 km from the point of detonation there is no reason to suppose it would just stop dead in its tracks when it reached 8 km from the camps, as the authors of the report imply.
But there was more: Further in the text, Grapple Y makes a sudden startling appearance, leaping out of page 7:-
During Operation Grapple Y, the greatest and only significant measured value (of 150 microcuries per square metre) was obtained at the uninhabited site at Vaskess Bay. However, records indicate that subsequent surveys using hand-held instruments did not confirm this high figure.
Grapple Y’s “rogue” status” is once again confirmed. It clearly contaminated at least one area with radiation levels 150 times the recommended safe limit.
Vaskess Bay is on the east coast of the island and just a few short miles from several inhabited areas including St Stanislas Bay, Paris, Benson Point, and most important of all, Port London where thousands of men and islanders had been evacuated for safety reasons.
The charge that hand-held instruments didn’t confirm the readings taken from the official site is suspect because we are not told what readings they did measure, or when they were taken.
In any event a helpful chart marked Table 4 at the back of the report gives a picture of the pattern of contamination over the island.
Entitled “Results of Local Survey for Operation Grapple Y” it details the fallout readings from 11 different monitoring points. Five sites, including the Main camp and the airfield are declared “below detectable level.”
But the other six, which includes Port London and the Joint Operations Centre, record measurable fallout, and some readings are way above proscribed safety limits.
This explosive document graphically illustrates the dishonesty and deceit as practised by the Ministry of Defence and its placemen.
For 50 years successive defence ministers have insisted absolutely that there was no radioactive fallout over Christmas Island after nuclear bomb tests. Yet here we have admissions, set out in official documents, that there was major contamination on Christmas Island following the Grapple Y explosion and others.
Two of the central pillars of the British government’s defence of its conduct over the nuclear weapons tests of the 1950s have been destroyed by the information contained in these documents. According to the evidence from the official archives this is what happened:-
Grapple Y, Britain’s biggest bomb, unleashed enormous elemental forces over an island already saturated with rain and enveloped by water vapour from earlier downpours. Christmas Island was like an enormous test-tube into which a giant spark was introduced.
The bomb created a violent rainstorm that scavenged highly radioactive fission products from the bomb which were borne by the wind over large areas of the island (as the scientists knew it would) and deposited over areas, like Port Camp, where most of the troops were gathered.
Huge hotspots of radiation formed at various points on the island as the fallout carried by the prevailing wind gradually came to earth. It was inevitable that the men were contaminated, either directly or by swallowing water, and swimming in the lagoons.
The contamination would have entered the bloodstream, eventually reaching vital organs producing various types of cancers. This internal exposure would not have shown up on the external monitors worn by the servicemen.
Exploding Grapple Y may have been a technical and scientific triumph, but it was also an exercise in folly that put at grave risk the lives and well-being of thousands of unsuspecting servicemen.
It was a gamble that has so far paid off for the government. For despite all the evidence there was still no actual proof that the servicemen so callously placed in danger were ever harmed by their experience. As we have seen, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of the terrible effects the bomb had on the men who took part; many health surveys had been carried out by newspapers and other media organisations.
The only survey the government paid any credence to was that carried out by the National Radiological Protection Board which compared death rates with servicemen who took part in the bomb tests to those that didn’t. It concluded that the men were not harmed.
But this could simply not be so. Then it was realised the NRPB survey had one fatal flaw: it encompassed the 20,000 servicemen who attended all 21 tests carried out by the British in the 1950s. With so many bomb tests attended by so many men, statistics about health effects over so many years were bound to be blurred.
But now that just one bomb test had been identified as a rogue, the veterans could concentrate their efforts. They decided to compare the Grapple Y veterans with those from other bomb tests.
A total of 3,722 servicemen witnessed the Grapple Y blast. If a study of health problems in the men who attended this test found that higher than normal numbers had been hit by illness than men from the other tests, the important principal of cause (Grapple Y) and effect (higher incidents of sickness) could be established.
The National Radiological Protection Board had already set the precedent when it commissioned a small study by Leiden University into incidents of cataracts reported by nuclear veterans. The study, carried out in 1993 compared 10 veterans who suffered from cataracts with an equal number who didn’t. The study showed there was a small increase in the men who attended the bomb tests. This was kept secret.