The Nuclear Claims Tribunal in the Marshall Islands says a hearing will have to be held to look at the compensation claim by the people of Ailuk atoll.
Ailuk Islanders are seeking more than a billion US dollars in damages for the exposure to the US nuclear weapons test in 1954.
A spokesman for the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in Majuro, Bill Graham, says the compensation amount will be determined at a hearing.
"They were never evacuated so they have to base their entire claim on the damage that took place to the people while they were in Ailuk. The fact that they should have been evacuated but were not, and as a result of the fact that they were not, that they received higher amounts of exposures."
