In the Enewetak Atoll, located in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean is the Runit Dome (the dome of Runit), also known as The Tomb (the Tomb). This dome contains the radioactive waste produced by the nuclear bombs detonated in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 by the United States. Its containment is being threatened by climate change.
Cold War
During the Cold War, the United States bombed the Marshall Islands 67 times. Following this, the Pentagon dumped biological weapons on the islands. When finished, they collected the irradiated soil from the islands, poured it into a crater left by a previous nuclear detonation, mixed everything with concrete and covered everything with a huge concrete dome.
The sealed pit contains more than 87,800 cubic meters of radioactive waste – enough to fill up to 35 Olympic swimming pools with radioactive waste – that were buried as part of efforts to clean up the ‘dangerous nuclear waste’ left over after the US military The US detonated nuclear bombs on the Earth’s surface in the 1940s and 1950s. On March 1, 1954, the Pentagon commanded Castle Bravo and also detonated a 15-megaton thermonuclear warhead over Bikini Atoll.
However, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times and Columbia University (USA) has revealed that the radioactive “grave” is leaking.
Scientists made five trips to the area and found that the sea level around the dome rises every year and there is evidence of coral bleaching, fish kills and negative impacts on the health of the locals.
According to reports, sea level increases three times faster in the Marshall Islands than the world average. A worrying fact. Experts think that the waters around this area could rise a meter and a half more by the end of the century, which could cause the dome to crack and spill deadly debris inside.
The Los Angeles Times exposes that climate change is opening that dome, threatening to spill nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean.
Recall that the Marshall Islands represent a collection of 29 atolls on 1,156 islands. More than 50,000 people live there. And after the US actions, many women on the islands “began to give birth to less than human things,” a Marshall Islands woman told diplomats on a fact-finding mission decades later. Birth defects are so common on the islands that people have several words to describe them, including demons, jellyfish, and baby grapes.
The United States has largely discounted its responsibility to the Marshall Islands. However, as sea levels and temperatures rise, the security of the Tomb is being compromised. The United States says it is now the responsibility of the Marshall Islands. Who is going to take care of this nuclear coffin that threatens to break? It could be a massive nuclear catastrophe. The consequences for life in the ocean can be disastrous.
If the sea level continues to rise as it has up to now in this area of the Pacific, the Marshall Islands and with it also the Tomb, will end up submerged. Under that kind of pressure, the concrete dome will crack, spilling all of America’s Cold War debris into the Pacific …
Reference: Los Angeles Times
