McClelland Royal Commission

The McClelland Royal Commission or Royal Commission into British nuclear tests in Australia (McClellan's Royal Commission or Royal Commission on British Nuclear Weapons Tests in Australia ) was a commission of inquiry that was set up by the Australian government between 1984 and 1985 to investigate the United Kingdom with the Authorization to investigate nuclear weapons tests carried out by Australia on Australian territory and its effects. Jim McClelland , a former Australian minister, was chairman .

Essential results

The commission was reported that 30 leaking tons of radioactive waste had been dumped into the sea off the west coast of Australia. Former Prime Minister Arthur Fadden is supposed to send the British Prime Minister a message with the words "What the bloody hell is going on, the cloud is drifting over the mainland?". (English for: "What the bloody shit is going on here, the cloud is blowing over the mainland?" ). A CSIRO scientist found radioactive fallout on mainland Australia.

The McClelland Royal Commission was told that one hundred Aboriginal people walked barefoot across radioactive areas because the boots they were given did not fit. According to a scientist involved, the fallout is said to have been three times higher than expected.

A house that was built less than 200 meters from a mineral mine 25 years ago is still dangerously radioactively contaminated.

According to a specific report of an investigation into residual radioactive contamination, about 100,000 dangerous metal fragments contaminated with plutonium are still in the Maralinga - nuclear test area - 25 years after the nuclear tests that contaminated them.

An engineer told the McClelland Royal Commission that Geiger counter readings of the fallout at the nearby Marble Bar were well above the measurable scale.

The report differed from the UK government's official version.

This report emphasized the partnership between the two nations and found that the approach to security was in line with international standards of the time. This approach was contrary to the historical disregard of the Australian authorities for the indigenous people. Some observers have suggested that both reports were influenced by the politics of the time: Britain wanted to minimize its responsibilities while Bob Hawke's Australian government wanted to harm its political opponents.

additional

In 2006 the Australian documentary Silent Storm was released. He deals with government cover-ups regarding radiation exposure of the Australian population.

literature

• Alan Parkinson, Maralinga: Australia's Nuclear Waste Cover-up, Ed .: ABC Books, ISBN 978-0-7333-2108-5
• Lorna Arnold , Mark Smith: Britain, Australia and the Bomb, Ed .: Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-1-4039-2101-7

See also

• Montebello Islands
• Pitjantjatjara
• Operation Hurricane

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Age , The West Australian 5/1/85 The Sunday Times 6/1/85
2. ^ The West Australian , The Age 7th January 1985
3. ↑ Daily News 02/05/85, The West Australian , The Age 02/06/85
4. ↑ The Age , 02/13/1985
5. ↑ The West Australian , 02/13/1985
6. ↑ The West Australian , 04/08/1985
7. ↑ The West Australian , 04/26/1985
8. ↑ The West Australian , 06/08/1985
9. ↑ The Age , 8/6/1985
10. ^ Arnold, Lorna (1987). A Very Special Relationship: British Atomic Weapons Trials in Australia . London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. ISBN 0-11-772412-2 .
11. ↑ Dieter Michel: Villains, Victims and Heroes: Contested Memory and the British Nuclear Tests in Australia . API network. Archived from the original on July 28, 2008. Retrieved September 30, 2013.
12. ↑ The film Silent storm in the Internet Movie Data Bank ( Memento from February 8, 2017 in the Internet Archive )