this dome in the pacific houses tons of radioactive waste – and it's leaking

theguardian.com

This dome in the Pacific houses tonsof radioactive waste – and it's leaking

Kim Wall

Black seabirds circle high above the giant concrete dome that rises

from a tangle of green vines just a few paces from the lapping

waves of the Pacific. Half buried in the sand, the vast structure

looks like a downed UFO.

At the summit, figures carved into the weathered concrete state

only the year of construction: 1979. Officially, this vast structure is

known as the Runit Dome. Locals call it The Tomb.

Below the 18-inch concrete cap rests the United States’ cold war

legacy to this remote corner of the Pacific Ocean: 111,000 cubic

yards of radioactive debris left behind after 12 years of nuclear

tests.

Brackish water pools around the edge of the dome, where sections

of concrete have started to crack away. Underground, radioactive

waste has already started to leach out of the crater: according to a

2013 report by the US Department of Energy, soil around the dome

is already more contaminated than its contents.

Now locals, scientists and environmental activists fear that a storm

This dome in the Pacific houses tons of radioactive waste – and it's leaking about:reader?url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-...

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surge, typhoon or other cataclysmic event brought on by climate

change could tear the concrete mantel wide open, releasing its

contents into the Pacific Ocean.

“Runit Dome represents a tragic confluence of nuclear testing and

climate change,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center

for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, who visited the

dome in 2010.

“It resulted from US nuclear testing and the leaving behind of large

quantities of plutonium,” he said. “Now it has been gradually

submerged as result of sea level rise from greenhouse gas

emissions by industrial countries led by the United States.”

Enewetak Atoll, and the much better-known Bikini Atoll, were the

main sites of the United States Pacific Proving Grounds, the setting

for dozens of atomic explosions during the early years of the cold

war.

The remote islands – roughly halfway between Australia and

Hawaii – were deemed sufficiently distant from major population

centres and shipping lanes, and in 1948, the local population of

Micronesian fishermen and subsistence farmers were evacuated to

another atoll 200 km away.

In total, 67 nuclear and atmospheric bombs were detonated on

Enewetak and Bikini between 1946 and 1958 – an explosive yield

equivalent to 1.6 Hiroshima bombs detonated every day over the

course of 12 years.


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The detonations blanketed the islands with irradiated debris,

including Plutonium-239, the fissile isotope used in nuclear

warheads, which has a half-life of 24,000 years.

Detonation of the nuclear device during Operation Ivy in the Marshall

Islands in 1951. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

When the testing came to an end, the US Defence Nuclear Agency

(DNA – later the DoE) carried out an eight-year cleanup, but

Congress refused to fund a comprehensive decontamination

programme to make the entire atoll fit for human settlement again.

The DNA’s preferred option – deep ocean dumping – was

prohibited by international treaties and hazardous waste

regulations, and there was little appetite for transporting the

irradiated refuse back to the US.

In the end, US servicemen simply scraped off the islands’

contaminated topsoil and mixed it with radioactive debris. The

resulting radioactive slurry was then dumped in an unlined 350-foot

crater on Runit Island’s northern tip, and sealed under 358 concrete

panels.

But the dome was never meant to last. According to the World


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Health Organization, the $218m plan was designed as temporary

fix: a way to store contaminated material until a permanent

decontamination plan was devised.

Meanwhile, only three of the atoll’s 40 islands were cleaned up, but

not Enjebi, where half of Enewetak’s population had traditionally

lived. And as costs spiralled, resettlement efforts of the northern

part of the atoll stalled indefinitely.

Nevertheless, in 1980, as the Americans prepared their own

departure, the dri-Enewetak (“people of Enewetak”) were allowed to

return to the atoll after 33 years.

Three years later, the Marshall Islands signed a compact of free

association with the US, granting its people certain privileges, but

not full citizenship.

The deal also settled of “all claims, past, present and future” related

to the US Nuclear Testing Program – and left the Runit Dome under

the responsibility of the Marshallese government.

Today, the US government insists that it has honoured all its

obligations, and that the jurisdiction for the dome and its toxic

contents lies with the Marshall Islands.

The Marshallese, meanwhile, say that a country with a population

of 53,000 people and a GDP of $190m – most of it from US aid

programs – is simply incapable of dealing with the potential

radioactive catastrophe left behind by the Americans.


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Bravo Crater at Bikini Atoll, site of the 1954 hydrogen explosion where the

island of Nam was destroyed. Photograph: Alamy

“It’s clear as day that the local government will neither have the

expertise or funds to fix the problem if it needs a particular fix,” said

Riyad Mucadam, climate adviser to the office of the Marshallese

president.

Today, Runit – the setting for JG Ballard’s short story Terminal

Beach – is still uninhabited, but it receives regular stream of visitors

heading from neighboring islands to its abundant fishing grounds or

searching for scrap metal to salvage.

Approaching the island by boat across from the vast, shallow

lagoon – the world’s second largest – the concrete structure is

barely visible among the scrubby trees.

Three decades after the Americans’ departure, abandoned bunkers

dot the shoreline, and electric cables encased in black rubber

snake across the sand.

Nowhere on the beaches or the dome itself is there a warning to

stay away – or even an indication of radioactivity.

Enewetak’s senator Jack Ading, who lives in Majuro 600 miles


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away, doesn’t believe his home atoll is safe: resettlement efforts in

Rongelap and Bikini atolls, also affected by testing, had to be

aborted in the 1970s due to lingering contamination, despite safety

assurances by the US.

“Just close it off,” said Ading, who has called for armed guards to

be stationed on the site – or at the very least the construction of a

fence.

“If they |the US government] can spend billions of dollars on wars

like Iraq, I’m sure they can spend $10,000 for a fence. It’s a small

island. Make it permanent for people not to visit Runit Dome and

the surrounding area, ever.”

Locals say they know there is “poison” on the island – there is no

Marshallese word for contamination – but say that Runit offers one

of the few sources of income on the impoverished atol.

The US has yet to fully compensate the dri-Enewetak for the

irreversible damage to their homeland, a total amounting to roughly

$244m as appraised by the Nuclear Claims Tribunal, which was

established by the US Congress in 1988 to adjudicate claims for

compensation for health effects from the testing.

Traditional livelihoods were destroyed by the testing: the US

Department of Energy bans the export of fish and copra – dried

coconut flesh used for its oil – on the grounds of lingering

contamination.

Nowadays, the atoll’s growing population survives on a depleted


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trust fund from the Compact of Free Association with the US, but

payouts come to just $100 per person, according to locals.

Many locals are deeply in debt, and dependent on a supplemental

food program funded by the US Department of Agriculture, which

delivers shipments of process foods such as Spam, flour and

canned goods. The destruction a centuries-old lifestyle have lead to

both a diabetes epidemic and regular bouts of starvation on the

island.

The Lady E, a vessel that transports supplemental food from the capital to

Enewetak, now hosts people who migrate in and out of the atoll.

Photograph: Coleen Jose/Coleen Jose

Those who can afford it have taken advantage of the Compact’s

visaless travel benefits and migrated to Hawaii.

“Enewetak has no money. What will people do to make money?”

asked Rosemary Amitok, who lives with her husband Hemy on the

atoll’s largest island.

The couple eke out a living by scavenging for scrap copper on

Runit and other islands on the atoll. For weeks at a time, they camp

out in a makeshift tent on the island while Hemy digs for cables and

other metal debris.


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The sell the salvage for a dollar or two per pound to a Chinese

merchant who runs Enewetak’s only store and exports the metal,

along with sea shells and sea cucumbers to Fujian in China.

Other – and more worrying – traces of Enewetak’s history have also

reached China: according to a 2014 study published in

Environmental Science & Technology, plutonium isotopes from the

nuclear tests have been found as far a the Pearl River Estuary in

Guangdong province.

Many people in Enewetak fear that one day the dome will break

open, further spreading highly radioactive debris.

As catastrophic weather events become more frequent, recent

studies – including 2013 study of the Runit Dome’s structural

integrity carried out by the DoE – have warned that typhoons could

destroy or damage the cement panels, or inundate the island.

A 2013 report commissioned by the US Department of Energy to

the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory acknowledged that

radioactive materials are already leaching out of the dome, but

downplays the possibility of serious environmental damage or

health risks.

“The waste within the dome is at least contained. There aren’t too

many concerns for the Runit Dome to pose a threat to local

people,” said Terry Hamilton, the scientific director for the Marshall

Islands Program of the DoE-commissioned Lawrence Livermore

National Laboratory.


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Hamilton said that cracks in the concrete were merely the result of

long-term drying and shrinkage, but said the DoE was planning to

carry out cosmetic repairs in order to restore public confidence.

The DoE insists Enewetak is safe for human settlement today, and

says it monitors local residents, groundwater, crops and marine life

for radiation. Separate checkups are carried out on those

suspected of digging for scrap metal.

Though Enewetak is not allowed to sell its copra and fish, Hamilton

insists the produce would satisfy safety standards on the

international market.

But locals complain that basic information – including results of

their own tests for exposure to plutonium – is not readily accessible

to them.

Independent scientists say that salvaging Runit’s scrap metal may

expose locals to much higher risks.

“Those guys are digging in the dirt breathing in stuff in hot spots.

That has to be hundreds of thousands times higher doses of

potential health effects than swimming,” said Ken Buessler, a senior

scientist and marine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic

Institution, who visited Runit and gathered samples of sediment in

the lagoon earlier this year.


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Navy clean-up crews swab the deck of the Prinz Eugen in an attempt to

reduce radiation levels after the July 1946 nuclear test blast at Bikini Atoll.

Photograph: AP

In 2012, Barack Obama signed legislation directing the DoE to

monitor the groundwater beneath the dome, conduct a visual study

of its exterior and submit reports determining whether

contamination in the dome poses a health risk to the dri-Enewetak.

In an emailed response to questions, US ambassador to the

Marshall Islands Thomas Armbruster said that a recent meeting

between the US, the DoE and the Marshall Islands government

was “one of the best ever”.

The minister himself remembers that encounter differently.

Tony De Brum was nine years old and living on the atoll of Likiep,

when he witnessed the blinding flash, thunderous roar and

blood-red skies of Castle Bravo, the most powerful hydrogen bomb

ever detonated by the US, which was tested at Bikini Atoll on 1

March 1954.

Now the Marshall Islands minister of foreign affairs, he has since

emerged as a voice for small island nations in international climate

negotiations and leading advocate on the non-proliferation of

nuclear weapons. De Brum is spearheading an ambitious lawsuit

against the world’s nuclear powers, including the US, at the

International Court of Justice.


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“We asked the Americans, are you going to put a sign on the dome

that says ‘Don’t come here because you might get exposed’?” he

said.

“Our president asked: ‘Are you going to put a sign up so that the

birds and turtles also understand?’”

The US has never formally apologized to the Marshall Islands for

turning it into an atomic testing ground. When the UN special

rapporteur on human rights and toxic waste, Calin Georgescu,

visited the Marshall Islands in 2012 he criticized the US, remarking

that the islanders feel like ‘nomads’ in their own country. Nuclear

testing, he said, “left a legacy of distrust in the hearts and minds of

the Marshallese”.

“Why Enewetak?” asked Ading, Enewetak’s exiled senator during

an interview in the nation’s capital. “Every day, I have that same

question. Why not go to some other atoll in the world? Or why not

do it in Nevada, their backyard? I know why. Because they don’t

want the burden of having nuclear waste in their backyard. They

want the nuclear waste hundreds of thousands miles away. That’s

why they picked the Marshall Islands.”

“The least they could’ve done is correct their mistakes.”

This article is part of a multimedia project produced by The

GroundTruth Project


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this dome in the pacific houses tons of radioactive waste – and it's leaking

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