Following the decision of the Advisory Military Sub-Committee to the BNTVA's medal application dated June 2021, the recent Freedom of Information Requests concerning the Committee in last week's press and the results of the Fourth Analysis of the British Nuclear Weapons' Test Participants Study, the BNTVA wishes to re-submit the medal application sent to the Committee last year.

The BNTVA is concerned that in light of the above email attachment as an outcome of the FOI, the submission was viewed in terms of health effects which would naturally garner a rejection, rather than the criteria which Mr Mercer pointed to in his letter of support. We are shocked that the submission was potentially viewed in the same way as Veterans UK would examine a war pension, rather than exploring the risk and rigour that the test participants bravely endured during the race for the Commonwealth nuclear deterrent. 

I attach an extract of the previous Committee's minutes of the 29 August 2013, whereby under point 13, the AMSC established that the British nuclear veterans had indeed encountered risk within their service. Your response to me in December states that the Committee was aware of the "novel and challenging surroundings in which Service personnel involved in the test programme must have found themselves", which is understandably unique yet points to rigour. 

Indeed, Dr Richard Haylock of the UK Health Security Agency writes in response to my questions, "Information about deaths in the first 10 years was given in the previous analysis. In total there were 303 deaths in first 10-years and nearly half of these (148 deaths) were attributable to accidents or violence with only 53 cancers. The results are presented in table 6.7 in NRPB report W27."

The rate of intentional self-harm which covers accidents and violence (ICD9-10) for nuclear test participants was far higher than in the control group - for example, a comparison of 122 suicides amongst Army nuclear test veterans of Christmas Island compared to 68 in the control group. I am at a loss of how to explain any further about the risk and rigour that these men endured; as the Operation Totem document states from William Penney himself, health and safety had been lacking despite hearing the repeated sentences from government about adequate health and safety. 

The tests weren't all about film badges as the Fourth Analysis points out, as a presumption had been made beforehand about likelihood of radiation; this was judged on the previous tests concerning potential measurable exposure, which was not truly scientific, so thousands of men attended without being monitored. 2.2 in the Fourth Analysis study attached above states, "Dose monitoring records were available for 23% of the participants, of whom 64% had zero recorded dose (see supplementary table S2). Only 8% of the total participant cohort had non-zero recorded radiation doses and the mean dose from gamma radiation amongst these men was 9.9 mSv." 

It is lamentable that the nuclear test veterans have not been awarded a medal to date, and those who are still alive are an average age of 85 years old. Please will the government and the AMSC recognise these Cold War heroes swiftly? 

The surviving participants are suffering due to government misunderstanding about safety at the tests. Many suffer enduring trauma from witnessing these nuclear bombs and/or cleaning up invisible radiation. A moral injury has been caused by the governments at that time concerning an act of commission, act of omission and act of betrayal which has impacted their very fabric of being at the nuclear testing, echoed by academics working with veterans and health professionals. 

With kindest regards,

British Nuclear Test Veterans' Association