Nuke vets’ £450k

Recognition for A-bomb test heroes after 70yrs

- SUSIE BONIFACE

PRIME Minister Liz Truss has caved to the Mirror’s demands to mark the Plutonium Jubilee with a £450,000 gift for nuclear test veterans. 

The heroes of Britain’s Cold War radiation experiments and their families welcomed the news, but said it did not go far enough to address the tests’ legacy of cancers, early death and birth defects.

More than half the money – £250,000 – will go to an academic or cultural institution to record oral histories of survivors. The remaining £200,000 will be available for veterans’ charities to bid for.

But that will be equivalent to just £133 a head for the estimated 1,500 ex-servicemen still alive.