Greenpeace hailed as an “historic breakthrough” a February 1994 inquest verdict that the cancer contracted by a former  worker at the Aldermaston atomic weapons plant was an industrial disease. Stanley Athawes, 70, worked at the plant for 26 years and was exposed to radiation 27 times. In December 1993, 39-year-old former nuclear submarine fitter Rudi Molinari was awarded £167,000 damages after contracting leukaemia. The Ministry of Defence denied negligence but admitted liability in that it “failed to do all that was reasonably practicable to restrict the extent to which Mr Molinari was exposed to ionising radiation.”

Reported in Hazards, number 46, 1994.