Over the past few months, the BNTVA has been grateful for the questions raised, answers given and the expertise acquired from Professor Robert (Bo) Jacobs, Nuclear Historian at the Hiroshima Peace Institute, author of the Global Hibakusha Home | Bo Jacobs Global Hibakusha Overview.mp4 on Vimeo

Bo shared with over 100 delegates during the BNTVA's conference reunion at the Telford Hotel & Golf Resort in 2021. He spoke at length about the intentional use of utilising radioactive fallout as a weapon on the participants at Bikini Atoll and in subsequent tests before the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963.

Bo's talk left a profound effect on British nuclear test veterans, family members and supporters. It was chilling to hear Bo's simple and evidence-based explanation of the government strategy in employing ("volunteering") troops and scientists as part of live atomic and nuclear tests whilst developing the nuclear deterrent during the Cold War. 

The ethics of these nuclear tests is certainly questionable, and, as stated in our last blog The Results are in - Findings of the Fourth and Final Government Study (bntva.com) we truly believe that a moral injury was committed by the British government on the test participants. Professor Neil Greenberg, Mental Health Defence, King's College London, and Professor Dominic Murphy of Forces in Mind Trust explain moral injury in more detail here A short introduction to Moral Injury - YouTube and Moral injury: the effect on mental health and implications for treatment - The Lancet Psychiatry

Moral injury is caused by one or more of three things:

• An act of commission that crosses a personal boundary of conscience
• An act of omission
• A betrayal from someone in authority.

In the case of the Commonwealth and American nuclear tests, a moral injury was caused in the act of commission and the betrayal of the weapons' test participants, causing life-long negative changes for up to 22,000 British participants.

The results of the Fourth Analysis of the Nuclear Test Weapons Test Participants gives a large volume of information concerning causes of death and cancer incidence over the last 40 years about Britain's nuclear test veterans.  Although both disturbing and fascinating, the core of the issue is quite simple - even in an epidemiological and statistical minefield. On reading the paper, Bo told the BNTVA, 

"The government prioritized the development of these weapons over the wellbeing of its soldiers."

Quite simply, the BNTVA, as the UK's charity for nuclear test veterans agrees fully with Bo's statement and we are grateful for his insight. We will take the main points of Bo's message when we and our sister charity, the NCCF, meet with the MOD at the invitation of the Prime Minister last month. The minutiae of the report is useful to aid our veterans and their widows to claim war pensions.

Unfortunately, the transgressive act has been committed, the genie is out of the bottle, and we have the sombre data on increased suicides amongst nuclear test veterans in comparison to a military control group. Events cannot be undone. However, now is the time for the government to respond to this paper, and listen to the representatives for the UK's nuclear test veterans in order to recompense and recognise these Cold War heroes and their families.