It is 73 years today since British weapon scientists detonated a 7kg ball of plutonium that had been placed in the hull of an unwanted warship, anchored off the north west coast of Australia.
That bomb - just 5cm across - created a blast bigger than that which had destroyed Hiroshima just seven years earlier. Quite a feat, especially considering Britain did it despite rationing, Soviet spies and an economy wracked by the effects of war.
But plutonium is the most toxic substance on Earth. If a human inhales 100 micrograms - equivalent to two grains of sand - there is a 100% chance of contracting cancer as a result. And by the time its nuclear weapon trials had ended, 45 bombs, 600 experiments, two countries and 15 years later, Britain had spread enough plutonium to wipe out the entire human race, and then some.
One test alone in the Outback, codenamed Operation Vixen B, was found to have contaminated the landscape with 22 billion mcg of plutonium-239 - the equivalent of 22,000 bags of sugar. That’s the same weight as a heavy goods lorry, or more sand than could be carried in the average dumper truck. It was spread by the winds, and by man, across an area about the same size as Wales and Scotland combined, and there were hundreds more experiments like it.
It is 73 years since troops were first ordered into that radiation. Since they were ordered to march up and down to stir up the toxic dust, ‘with and without respirators’.
It is 73 years since their urine was checked and found that they were contaminated.
It is 73 years since top brass and weapon scientists discussed the fact men were irradiated, and 73 years since the Prime Minister of the day told Parliament that no servicemen were put at any risk.
At later tests, the biological monitoring turned into widespread orders for blood testing and chest x-rays. The results for all of it were later removed from personnel files, a moral and legal offence that would be appalling if done by one GP to just one patient, but somehow acceptable when done to thousands in the name of the crown.
There has been an official cover-up of human experiments for 73 years. The troops’ medical records were sanitised, war pensions were denied, veterans were told they were imagining things, and grieving families assured that every one was perfectly safe and nothing was hidden from them - even when the first proof emerged.
It has been 73 years since the start of a criminal conspiracy to edit and withhold medical data that has been sacrosanct since the days of Galen. It has been 73 years that officials have misled judges, courts, and Parliament about what happened.
Two years ago I found the proof. Two years ago I told Boris Johnson, and then Keir Starmer, what I had found. It has been one year since a legal claim was launched, and 5 months since allegations of criminal misconduct were reported to the police.
On Tuesday whistleblowers were urged to step forward using the protections of the new Hillsborough Law, and campaigners met with the Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy. A day later, challenged by the BBC, the PM agreed to meet them too.
Campaigners have the solution - a one year special tribunal with the power to find rapid answers, investigate the cover-up, and deliver justice within the lifetimes of the few who survive. But there is no date for the meeting, and no guarantees.
Until the person in charge orders a light to be shined on the darkest places in the British state, the longest scandal in the history of these islands will continue.
Those that sent our servicemen to these tests, knew the that they were putting them in harms way. The servicemen, including my late father were used, they were experimented upon. Those statistics about plutonium are horrifying. The continued cover-up shames our country.
Mind blowing, and yet SO unsurprising - mankind, the species that destroys itself