A huge concrete dome built over a crater left by one of the 43 nuclear blasts on Runit Island photographed in 1980
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres raised concerns Thursday that a concrete dome built last century to contain waste from atomic bomb tests is leaking radioactive material into the Pacific.
Speaking to students in Fiji, Guterres described the
structure on Enewetak atoll in the Marshall Islands as "a kind of coffin" and said it was a legacy of Cold War-era nuclear tests in the Pacific
"The Pacific was victimised in the past as we all know," he said, referring to
nuclear explosions carried out by the United States and France in the region.
In the Marshalls, numerous islanders were forcibly evacuated from
ancestral lands and resettled, while thousands more were exposed to
radioactive fallout.
The island nation was ground zero for 67 American nuclear weapons tests from 1946-58 at Bikini and Enewetak atolls, when it was under US administration.
Comment: UPDATE May 18: Since the recent revelations of the leakage of the dome, residents of the islands and those previously involved in the original cleanup operations have come forward, saying the
US had failed to take precautions to prevent the dome from leaking. Even though the government declared the area safe for residents to return, the dome began leaking almost immediately after the engineers left. Islanders have also struggled with numerous health issues
from cancers to weakened immune systems, and other noncommunicable diseases as well. Many of the roughly 8,000 people involved in the decontamination process have since died.
"There was never any lining put in that dome," Ernest Davis, an Enewetak Atoll cleanup veteran, told RT, noting that the US government apparently had never planned to replace the temporary dome with a permanent containment structure that would be properly sealed from radiation leaks. "Nobody said anything about going back in and removing it or making it permanent. We were told that it was permanent."
"I don't think it was ever [the US government's] intention to further clean up the island. It was too costly," Brooke Takala Abraham, who lives in the Marshall Islands, told RT.
The United States detonated 43 atomic bombs around the Marshall Islands in the 1940s and 50s. The highly contaminated debris left over from the weapons tests was then dumped into a 100-meter-wide bomb crater on Enewetak Atoll. US servicemen sealed it up with a concrete cap to create a structure called the Runit Dome. The work, however, was allegedly carried out without any proper safety consideration for the cleanup crew.
"Those people who were involved in the cleanup... did not receive proper protection from radioactive elements," Abraham said.
Furthermore, the government has never even bothered to study the long-term health issues of those exposed to radiation waste.
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