How the US betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster

[soryang]

Susan Rust NOV. 10, 2019 | REPORTING FROM MAJURO, MARSHALL ISLANDS
LA Times

Five thousand miles west of Los Angeles and 500 miles north of the equator, on a far-flung spit of white coral sand in the central Pacific, a massive, aging and weathered concrete dome bobs up and down with the tide.

Here in the Marshall Islands, Runit Dome holds more than 3.1 million cubic feet — or 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools — of U.S.-produced radioactive soil and debris, including lethal amounts of plutonium. Nowhere else has the United States saddled another country with so much of its nuclear waste, a product of its Cold War atomic testing program.

Between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear bombs on, in and above the Marshall Islands — vaporizing whole islands, carving craters into its shallow lagoons and exiling hundreds of people from their homes.

U.S. authorities later cleaned up contaminated soil on Enewetak Atoll, where the United States not only detonated the bulk of its weapons tests but, as The Times has learned, also conducted a dozen biological weapons tests and dumped 130 tons of soil from an irradiated Nevada testing site. It then deposited the atoll’s most lethal debris and soil into the dome.

Much more:

https://www.latimes.com/projects/marshall-islands-nuclear-testing-sea-level-rise/

related LA Times article:

U.S. won’t clean up Marshall Islands nuclear waste dome but wants it free of anti-U.S. graffiti

SUSANNE RUSTSTAFF WRITER
NOV. 14, 2019 5 AM LA Times

For years, American authorities have asserted they hold no responsibility for Runit Dome, a concrete-capped waste site in the Marshall Islands, where the United States dumped 35 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of atomic soil and debris created by its Cold War nuclear weapons testing program.

But sometime during the spring of 2018, unknown vandals spray-painted graffiti across its face: “Nuclear Waste. Property of USA Government. Please Return to Sender” and “Nuclear Waste. Property of the USA. Please Return to Sender.”

That grabbed the attention of the U.S. government and its contractors.

Despite its position that the dome and its radioactive contents belong to the Marshallese government, the U.S. Department of Energy paid a contractor to scrub off the offending message after getting permission from the mayor of Enewetak Atoll, where the dome is located.

more:

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-11-14/marshall-islands-runit-nuclear-waste-dome-site-graffiti

[TexasTowelie]

1. K&R! nt

[IndyOp]

2. It isn't what is real that matters - only perception matters. (n/t)

[mountain grammy]

3. K & R