MoD lied for 40 years that irradiated British troops had a "zero dose"

24 January 2024 , 19:52

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For 40 years, the Ministry of Defence has been clear about the cause of Kenneth Measures’ death from a rare type of lung cancer.

A letter written in February 1984 by a junior minister told his family: “The information from the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment shows Mr Measures received a zero radiation dose from the United Kingdom nuclear tests.”

Now the Mirror can reveal proof that the official line is part of a cover-up, in which thousands of families, inquests and court hearings, have been misled, to deny a multi-million pound liability.

The truth is that British and Commonwealth troops were deliberately exposed to the equivalent of up to 800 dental x-rays in just a day during Cold War radiation experiments - dramatically raising their risk of cancer.

Nuke vet Kenneth Measures pictured in his navy uniform, in a picture he sent home to sweetheart Valerie with the inscription "your ever-loving Ken"

Valerie also served in navy, but later took on the MoD in a futile battle to prove it had caused the cancer which killed Ken

Kenneth, of Helston, Cornwall, was just 54 when he died at the end of 1983. It had been 36 years since he had followed orders to witness four nuclear bombs, with a combined yield 200 times that of the atomic blast which flattened Hiroshima.

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A pathologist noted at his post mortem that secondary tumours had grown on his spine, and that he had wasted away to almost nothing.

His widow Valerie did not believe her fighting-fit husband, whose job had been to service the helicopters flying in and out of Ground Zero, would have contracted the disease had he not been irradiated.

His type of cancer, adenocarcinoma of the lung, is rarely seen in anyone so young, and can be caused by radiation exposure.

The letter from a junior defence minister to Valerie's MP, insisting Ken had a "zero radiation dose"

Valerie battled for years, fought for an inquest, and badgered the coroner’s officer to have her husband’s body tested for radiation. She wrote to her MP and demanded answers, but got back the official line from the MoD that, according to the atomic scientists in charge of the records, Ken had a "zero radiation dose".

“She just hit a brick wall, and in the end it made her mentally and physically ill. The inquest came back saying natural causes. She got depression, and it was decided that it was better to just shelve it,” said daughter Melanie.

“She put all my dad’s stuff in a box and put it away. A few years ago she was diagnosed with dementia, and when we applied for dad’s nuclear test medal on her behalf we showed it to her, but she didn’t really know what it was. She died just before Christmas, and she never did find out the truth.”

Kenneth and Valerie, pictured on their wedding day

Around 22,000 servicemen took part in bomb tests in Australia and the Pacific between 1952 and 1967. Most were ordered to watch explosions, and live near Ground Zero. Others were ordered to fly, sail, and crawl through fallout in horrifying experiments.

The Ministry of Defence admits that just 23% of them were monitored for radiation. They were given a badge made from camera film, which could be developed to detect exposure.

The results - claiming almost two-thirds of them had a ‘zero dose’ - have been relied upon by the MoD ever since to reject war pensions, block wrongful death rulings from coroners, and to defeat compensation lawsuits.

As Valerie began asking questions, other wives and veterans were doing the same. In September 1984, the Mirror's sister paper the Sunday People launched a front page investigation into ‘Our Atom Bomb Kids’, and demanded action.

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'Our Atom Bomb Kids' front page investigation in the Sunday People, September 1984

Ken pictured at work. He was based on aircraft carriers and also at Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose

The scandal exploded, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was forced into ordering a scientific study of the veterans’ deaths from the National Radiological Protection Board. In Parliament, she insisted: “No special measures to monitor the long-term health of military personnel were taken, because the radiation exposure records indicated that they had not been exposed to any significant health hazard.”

But the scientists discovered the records were bogus. That damning fact was never made public when a summary of their research was announced in 1988, five years after Ken died. Instead, it was hidden in a 140-page “description of methodology” that was referenced in a footnote.

This shadow report was given an ISBN number, but the Stationary Office confirmed not a single copy was ever published or sold, and veterans campaigning at the time never knew about it.

It states the badge data was collected by atomic scientists and summarised in the 1960s, and the badges destroyed. When it was shared 20 years later with the NRPB, they were told the only notes made were from badges showing above the “minimum recordable level” - which kept changing.

An excerpt from the unpublished report, showing that "zero doses" could have included doses equivalent to between 100 and 800 dental x-rays

Their report says: “At the end of the test programme in the 1960s the minimum recordable level was 0.1 miliSievert, but the normal figure in Australia was 0.2 mSv, though, on occasions, 0.3 mSv or 0.5 mSv were used.”

A dental x-ray involves 0.005 mSv of radiation, and even that low dose can increase the risk of cancer. It means that servicemen who received the equivalent of 100 such x-rays in a single day would have been recorded as a “zero dose”.

The report goes on to say that at Operation Buffalo, a 1956 human experiment in Australia in which officers were ordered to walk, crawl and run through fallout to see how much stuck to their uniforms, “the minimum recordable level was 4 mSv”, due to poor-quality badges.

More than 200 officers could have been exposed to the equivalent of 800 x-rays, and would still be recorded as having zero radiation. According to official figures, more than 70 per cent of those who took part in Buffalo later developed tumours. As the badges were all destroyed 60 years ago, it is impossible to to re-examine them and confirm the readings.

Ken in a picture he sent home from Christmas Island, with he and his shipmates swimming the sea between bomb blasts

Kenneth’s service, with the Royal Navy aboard aircraft carrier HMS Warrior and the tank landing ship HMS Narvik, was at Operation Grapple, held in 1957 and 1958 at Christmas Island in the Pacific.

The NRPB has found Kenneth and his comrades had a 28% increased risk of lung cancer - and only a handful were ever given a dose badge.

There were also Whitehall orders that navy crews at Grapple should have blood tests taken, which would have been more accurate, but the results have never been found. At the time of Kenneth’s death, many of those who had carried out the work were alive, still working at AWRE, and available for questioning.

Yet at his inquest, a “government scientist” called to give evidence refused to provide any details, beyond claiming that no helicopters had been contaminated and any fallout Ken had ingested would have "decayed rapidly within the body". He did not tell the coroner that the "zero dose" might be wrong.

How the Mirror reported the inquest at the time

Valerie vowed afterwards: “I will fight on, and investigate in my own quiet way. There must be something there... there was a lot not said, a lot that could not be said.”

But by the time the 1988 report was finally uncovered, and the blood testing discovered, Valerie had advanced dementia. She died aged 94, having spent longer as a widow than she did as a wife.

“Luckily my sister and I were born before he went to the tests, so we didn’t have the birth defects other families have been afflicted by,” said Melanie, of Kirkcaldy, Fife. “What mattered to my mum is the way people were treated, not just with the lack of information but being brushed off like they were nobody. Just like the Post Office, just like all the other scandals.”

The last bomb Kenneth saw, codenamed Grapple X, was Britain’s first thermonuclear weapon, and its explosion guaranteed our place in the world.

He and his comrades knew nothing of the risks, and were told we had to have The Bomb to be safe - and they had faith the government would keep them safe in return.

Melanie said: “I just want the truth to come out. My dad was so proud of being in the navy, and serving the Queen. Yet when he needed help there was none.”

Susie Boniface