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Tees N-bomb waste link: Christmas Island clean-up revealed
Neil Macfarlane, Evening Gazette
Jun 24 2011

Waste left over from British military operations on Christmas Island in the 1950s
THESE photographs show for the first time the full scale of the clean-up operation at a remote Pacific island which led to hundreds of tonnes of waste from British nuclear bomb tests being dumped on Teesside.
The military carried out the secret detonations of hydrogen bombs at Christmas Island in the 1950s.
Half a century later the UK reached agreement with the nation now known as the Republic of Kiribati to return and remove all waste abandoned after the tests.
Hundreds of tonnes of scrap metals, asbestos and radioactive sand were then collected and shipped back to Britain, where they were buried at the Port Clarence landfill site on the north bank of the Tees opposite Middlesbrough.
Local residents spoke of their shock when it was revealed that the material had been dumped at a site close to their homes, but the Environment Agency, the Ministry of Defence and landfill operators Augean stressed the waste poses no risk to the public.
They maintain that low levels of radioactivity detected in the load came from luminous dials found in abandoned military vehicles, and not from the bomb blasts.

The photographs of the 2006 clean-up operation were sent anonymously to Douglas Hern, a 75-year-old veteran of the tests who now serves as archives master for the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association.
He witnessed five of the bomb tests first hand while he was stationed on the island with the Navy.
Mr Hern, who lives near Spalding in Lincolnshire, said he can still vividly remember each of the blasts.
“You don’t forget any of them,” he said.
He said servicemen were told to crouch on the sand with their backs to the explosions with their heads between their legs and their hands over their eyes.
“There was a flash and you got this really warm feeling at the back of your head and down your back.
“It was as if someone was putting a fire bar to the back of your head, and the light came through so you could see the bones in your hands like a pink X-ray.”

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