Fallout widens over human nuclear guinea-pigs

By NAOMI LARKIN

In soaring temperatures, in a landscape devoid of shady trees and on yellow and brown soil, the men in heavy woollen clothing were forced to crawl and march through a nuclear fallout zone in the Australian desert.

Their mission, documents have revealed, was to test what type of clothing "would give the best protection against radioactive contamination in conditions of warfare."

The 24 servicemen, five of whom are believed to have been New Zealanders - the others British and Australian - were human guinea-pigs exposed to radiation during nuclear tests at Maralinga, South Australia, in the 1950s.

The experiments, revealed in a military memo held in Australian Government archives, have prompted calls for an inquiry from New Zealand Defence Minister Mark Burton and veterans' associations, both here and in Australia.

It has also forced the British Government to admit that it deliberately used the officers to enter the fallout zone three days after a nuclear device was detonated.

The British Government claimed in the European Court of Human Rights in 1997 that no humans had been used in experiments in nuclear weapons trials.

In his book Fields of Thunder, Bruce Bolt, who was among seismologists making use of the British tests to study the Earth's crust, said the first atomic bomb in the Maralinga series was equal to the one that destroyed Hiroshima.

The discovery of the "clothing trials" comes as pressure mounts from New Zealanders and Australians for the British Government to compensate servicemen involved in nuclear tests, and their families.

Yesterday, Mr Burton said he would call for reports from defence officials here and seek "early contact" with the British Government.

"At this stage I have not received any advice or any report relating to these tests. So my priority is to get the facts together and to be clear about what, if any, involvement New Zealand personnel had, what, if any, risk they faced and what appropriate follow-up action comes out of that."

The chairman of the New Zealand Nuclear Test Veterans Association, Roy Sefton, said his group was trying to track down the names of the servicemen involved.

It was assumed that the men had since died, but the group wanted to hear from any widows or other family members.

They may be unaware that their husbands or fathers were part of the experiments.

There was likely to have been medical and genetic fallout from the men being exposed to such high levels of radiation.

The association, which is a charitable trust, had earmarked $100,000 - half of a grant given by Mr Burton last year - for planned legal action against the British Government. The Maralinga cases could be incorporated into this.

"The relevant part is that Britain has admitted this," Mr Sefton said.

"That's an important point.

"In the past five or six years we've made great advances, but we still want to knock the UK Government off its perch," he said.

The archive documents, written on Australian Military Forces Central Command letterhead and uncovered by Scottish researcher Sue Rabbitt Roff, show that the tests were well known to Australian military authorities.

The papers say that 24 men were chosen for the trials.

Twelve British atomic bombs were detonated on Australian territory - three on the Monte Bello islands, off Western Australia, and nine at Maralinga - between 1952 and 1957.