But a New Zealand veterans advocate has dismissed the admission as a token gesture, which goes nowhere toward satisfying a claim for compensation by sailors here.
The Sunday Mirror reported that court papers show the British Ministry of Defense 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
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,” he said. “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.”
Sefton said British defense chiefs wanted to play the incident down because Britain wanted to upgrade its nuclear power stations and build new ones.
