Alan Rimmer - Between Heaven and Hell

In the event 5,000 people gathered in Trafalgar Square on Good Friday morning, April 4, 1958. They filed through the streets in a two-mile column and proceeded toward Aldermaston.

There was a carnival atmosphere among the throng as they marched down the highway. Students sang folk songs, Jazz bands played, mothers pushed prams; whole families marched together in an infectious spirit of peace and love.

The cause seemed good and brave and it caught the national imagination. On one of the coldest, windiest Easter Sundays in memory, more than 10,000 people shivered in the driving rain outside the barbed wire perimeter of the site, to hear speaker after speaker calling for a ban on nuclear bombs.

The Establishment was rocked to the core and it was hardly surprising that when Grapple Y went wrong it was covered up. And the cover-up continues to this day, as further documents that came to light proved.

The Meteorological Office reports had established a credible pathway for the radioactive contamination of troops on Christmas Island.

But although the new information was a momentous advance for the veterans, the Ministry of Defence still had a “get out of jail” card in that there was still no direct evidence that contamination actually occurred.

The mantra by successive defence ministers had never varied. Defence minister Hamilton confirmed it in his speech to the Commons:-

Shortly after the test, extensive environmental monitoring did not measure any deposition of radioactive materials from the detonation.

And Dr Mooney reiterated it in his April 2003 letter to Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh, when he stated that

environmental recordings were below the level of detection for contamination.

So despite the rain, and the fact it was caused by the bomb, and that the wind blew it over the island, there was, apparently no evidence of contamination.

It didn’t make sense, so further Freedom of Information requests were made, this time for the environmental records, for Christmas Island at the time of Grapple Y.

Thus far the only environmental records released by the government covered the whole Pacific, obviously a huge area encompassing thousands of islands in the general area of both British and American bomb tests.

The islands in the British sphere of influence were so far away from Christmas Island that it was hardly surprising there was little increase in radioactivity recorded.

What the British had conspicuously left out were fallout records on Christmas Island itself. This was apparently for the simple reason the bomb tests were supposed to have been detonated too high in the air to cause localised fallout.

Nevertheless, the FoI requests specifically asked for this data. After some resistance, Aldermaston reluctantly released a hefty 42-page report: “Environmental Monitoring at Christmas Island 1957-1958.” Written by four officials from Atomic Weapons Establishment Safety Directorate it was written specifically to reassure politicians about safety aspects on Christmas Island. It began with a warning.

This document and the information it contains is the property of the Ministry of Defence. It is provided in confidence for the personal information of, and use by, recipients and holders. It must not be communicated either directly or indirectly to, or discuss with, the press or other media, or any other person not authorised by, or on behalf of, Director Safety AWE to receive it.

What didn’t they want us to know? Maybe the reason is that the report is a master-class of obfuscation and evasion clearly designed to reassure, yet failing dismally. Even the opening sentence is a falsehood.

Detonations were permitted only when it had been reliably concluded that the meteorological conditions, in particular wind directions, were such that fall-out would be carried away from inhabited areas (emphasis added).

We now know of course that this isn’t true: the Meteorological Office report clearly states the winds for Grapple Y explosion were blowing toward areas where servicemen were gathered. So, based on the MoD’s own stringent requirements, the shot should not have been fired. The authors of the report were clearly not conversant with the weather reports.

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.”