![]() government it was safe to return home.īut there have been lingering worries about the atoll’s safety. In 1980, the people of Enewetak were told by the U.S. They sealed it with a clean concrete top 18 inches thick, creating what is now called the Tomb. ![]() They excavated soils from Enewetak and elsewhere and turned the soil into a concrete slurry, which they poured into an unlined crater on Runit Island, left behind by the Cactus bomb. Many said they were inadequately protected. soldiers and subcontractors to clean the site. In Enewetak, for instance, an entire island was vaporized.īetween 19, the United States enlisted roughly 4,000 U.S. Many Marshallese from the northern atolls of Enewetak, Bikini and Rongelap were evacuated during the testing program and forced into perpetual migration. began construction on the dome in 1977, after the Marshallese had demanded for decades that U.S. According to people at the meeting, the research is contained in an unpublished report. “It looked like it was breathing,” said Matayoshi, who was interviewed in Majuro several days after the presentation.Īnne Stark, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy, declined to comment on the presentation because Hamilton’s work had not yet been peer-reviewed or published. “That doesn’t make any sense.”Įxtending the incredulity further, Matayoshi and others noted that Hamilton presented a short animation of the dome, showing it rise and fall with the tide - suggesting seawater is freely flowing in and out of the containment zone. But as far as leaking from the dome, we don’t think that’s the case?” said James Matayoshi, mayor of Rongelap Atoll, one of the atolls contaminated by fallout from the nuclear testing program. And here, in the lagoon area, there is radiation. “What they’re saying is, here is the dome. Some Marshallese who attended the presentation are skeptical about the agency’s conclusion that the dome is not leaking into the lagoon. According to a photograph taken of Hamilton’s presentation slides, the 377-foot-wide crater in Enewetak Atoll contains groundwater samples with radiation levels 1,000 to 6,000 times higher than those found in the open ocean. Much of the fallout from those events is now entombed within Runit Dome. Although the Marshall Islands were home to only 6% of the total number of tests conducted by the United States, it bore the brunt of more than half the total energy yield of all U.S. ![]() But the following day, residents and officials informed The Times about the findings, which were later confirmed with others.īetween 19, the United States tested 67 nuclear devices in the Marshall Islands, including 44 in Enewetak Atoll, one of the nation’s 29 coral atolls. The Los Angeles Times was not at Hamilton’s presentation, and the Energy Department did not make him available to comment. He said isotopic analyses indicated the lagoon contamination was from residue from the initial nuclear weapons testing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |