Christmas Island

Furthermore, the LabEmbryoCam accompanied researchers from the University on an expedition to Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean, to support groundbreaking research on the early life stages of the Christmas Island red crab.

When 18-year-old John Morris stood for the first time on the Pacific’s Christmas Island in 1956, he had no idea that the destructive forces of nature he would witness, harnessed for military power, would hang like a mushroom cloud over his life forever.

The 1958 report from Christmas Island to the nuclear programme’s secret UK headquarters says that there were blood tests for Squadron Leader Terry Gledhill showing “gross irregularity”.

John Morris’s military medical file, for instance, is missing regular blood tests from Christmas Island that he says were part of the regime.

Terry Quinlan, who served in the Royal Army Service Corps on Christmas Island in 1958, told the BBC he had developed cataracts, hearing loss and heart problems following his exposure to the nuclear bomb blasts.