In August last year, the British government finally conceded, after years of denial and resistance, that servicemen had indeed been exposed to dangerous radiation levels during nuclear tests in Australia and the South Pacific in the 1950s, in which New Zealand sailors also participated or witnessed.
The admission came only after some 800 former servicemen from Britain, New Zealand and Fiji began a multimillion-dollar suit against the Ministry of Defence seeking compensation for being exposed to dangerous levels of radiation during tests at sites including Maralinga, in South Australia and at Christmas Island.
The admission was, however, a narrow one: the ministry agreed that the tests were responsible for the deaths of some British servicemen, but said only 159 were affected out of the 20,000 who were present.
New Zealand sailors on board the frigates HMNZS Pukaki and HMNZS Rotoiti witnessed nine aerial tests at Christmas Island, in the Pacific, and Malden Island, part of Kiribati, from May 15, 1957.
About 160 are thought to still be alive and, as members of the New Zealand Nuclear Test Veterans Association, are part of the class action suit.
The New Zealand association claims that many thousands of servicemen were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation and as a consequence died from related cancers or continue to suffer from related illnesses.
At that time, the ministry's own "safe" level of exposure to radiation, measured on film badges the British servicemen wore, was 30; however, many received measured doses of more than 100.
A small sample group of New Zealand men, called the "Rowland study", showed that most, if not all, suffered genetic effects due to radiation exposure, and it is being used in the British case.
The claim has been challenged by the ministry, which argues the tests happened too long ago for compensation to be considered, and that liability - that is, specific scientific links between the tests and subsequent illnesses - must be proven before compensation can be considered .
But in this regard Britain is out of step with governments around the world which have compensated nuclear test veterans. They have established schemes to compensate, and are still compensating, their veterans as they fall ill.
Scientific research has also since shown that episodes occurred during the 1950s tests that had not been anticipated by the scientists or test controllers, including yields being many times greater than predicted, and radiation being far more penetrating..
New Zealand should take a more than passing interest in this development.
Apart from the claims now being heard by the British High Court, French nuclear testing in the south Pacific was a cause celebre here for many years, climaxing when, in 1985, French secret agents sank the environmental group Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior at an Auckland wharf in order to prevent it from disrupting the testing programme.
France halted atmospheric testing in 1974 above Mururoa Atoll, southeast of Tahiti, but its underground blasts at Mururoa did not end until 1996.
Seven years later, in 2003, President Jacques Chirac claimed these tests had shown no ill effects to health in Polynesia, but an official French investigation in 2006 acknowledged for the first time that fallout from atmospheric nuclear blasts had landed on islands in French Polynesia.
Although the overall population of French Polynesia received only a low dose of radiation, some people were exposed to relatively higher levels, and the report called for the monitoring of the health of some 2000 residents.
The United States awards compensation under its Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to veterans who were involved in Pacific nuclear testing in the 1960s.
Just last week, after decades of refusal, France announced that it will compensate victims of past nuclear tests in the Pacific and the Sahara, and for the first time has formally recognised a link between the explosions and illnesses suffered by soldiers and civilians.
It has acknowledged that, while the tests were conducted as safely as possible, harm was suffered by some of the 150,000 army and civilian staff at the sites, often because of unanticipated consequences or a poorly understood need of protection.
An independent commission of doctors will examine existing and future claims, including those concerning "moral or aesthetic" damage.
Quite properly, the French Government has decided the burden of proof should be reversed: victims will no longer have to prove that their illness was due to the nuclear tests; it will be up the state to prove otherwise.
Furthermore, compensation will apply to any nationality.
Given past attitudes, however, we may expect that getting it will prove to be extremely difficult.
