Clean up the radioactive waste repository in The Runit Dome before it's too late
Clean up the radioactive waste repository in The Runit Dome before it's too late
The Issue
The world has had its fair share of nuclear disasters over the last half-century, including 1979 on three-mile island in Pennsylvania, the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986, and Fukushima, in Japan in 2011. However, few realize that another tremendous nuclear disaster is brewing elsewhere. Its location is so remote that it's no wonder you've probably never heard of it before. Five thousand miles west of Los Angeles and 500 miles north of the equator lies a small island chain known as the Marshall Islands. For many of us, these islands are best known as the birthplace of the movie monster "Godzilla," who was awakened and mutated from atomic bomb explosions at one of the many islands. Sadly, the islands may never actually end up spawning a terrifying lizard that breathes radioactive fire. They may still be just as frightening in the real world, if not even more so, very soon.
The Marshall Islands are remnants of ancient volcanoes that once protruded out from this region and were first settled nearly 3,000 years ago by the ancestors of the present-day Marshallese. These people crossed the ocean by boat through Asia and Polynesia. They lived a largely secluded and peaceful existence until the mid-1940s.
During World War II, the Japanese ruled the islands until the United States showed up and took them over in 1944. Very quickly, the American presence on the islands dramatically increased. American officials were eager to find a location to test their growing atomic arsenal as the Cold War began. The vast empty expansive ocean in this region that is nearly five times the size of California seemed to be the ideal spot. In fact, between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated a total of 67 nuclear devices across these islands, leaving all sorts of hazardous, radioactive waste behind.
The islands were even home to the biggest thermonuclear bomb ever tested by the United States government called "Castle Bravo." This experimental nuclear device created a mushroom cloud 4 ½ miles tall. Today, the bomb ranks as the third largest artificial explosion, equivalent to 15 megatons of TNT, making it 1,000 times as powerful as the Little Boy bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima. After the explosion, it dropped radioactive ash across 7,000 square miles of the surrounding area in and around the Marshall Islands. The Marshallese were not evacuated from their islands until three days after the bomb's detonation. Many would suffer from acute radiation sickness. While the heavy fallout also contaminated twenty-three additional members of a nearby Japanese fishing vessel. The initial blast vaporized the island where the bomb went off and created a crater 2,000 meters wide by 76 meters deep.
The last nuclear bomb the United States detonated on the islands was in 1958. Shortly afterward, the world began understanding the implications of sustained above-ground atomic testing. That is why in 1963, a treaty was signed amongst most of the world's nations that banned nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater, which still stands today. However, as far as the Marshall Islands were concerned, the U.S. had already done the damage.
All of this nuclear testing came at another horrible long-term price. That's because it also left behind an incredible amount of hazardous, radioactive waste. The United States government knew that it had to do something to clean its mess. As a result, they built a giant tomb to store all of this radioactive debris in the 1970s. They built it here on one of the most isolated islands in the chain called Runit. The tomb was built over an enormous existing crater from a previous nuclear test and kept off with a massive concrete dome to seal the harmful contents forever. The dome is 115 meters wide and 18 inches thick. Today, the tomb contains about 3.1 million cubic feet or 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools of nuclear waste. However, it doesn't just include all the nuclear waste that America generated on the Marshall Islands. The U.S. government also sent over 130 tons of radioactive soil and atomic debris from nuclear test sites in Nevada and threw all that into the tomb to join the Marshall Island debris. The tomb on Runit Island became one of America's largest storage sites for nuclear waste. While it's located over 7,000 miles from Washington, DC, it's only 665 miles from the Marshall Islands' capital city, Majuro.
The tomb's construction effort took three years to complete with the help of 4,000 U.S. service members. Six men died from acute radiation poisoning during the construction, and hundreds developed radiation-linked cancers from handling the hazardous wastes. All that dangerous waste includes all sorts of radiated equipment, soil, and plutonium lease chunks of concrete and metal. One particular isotope of plutonium housed inside the tomb, Plutonium-239, has a half-life of 24,100 years, which means it will take 24,100 years for the material to lose half of its radioactivity. However, what's even worse is that during the construction, the government failed to build a concrete lining underneath the dome and instead just relied upon the existing crater itself. As a result, seawater has slowly begun seeping into the tomb from the Pacific Ocean surrounding it. After it seeps in, it'll leak and take radioactive waste into the Pacific. Now, the Marshallese have to maintain a decades-old decaying structure while worrying about the future of what was once a pristine place. It's even more alarming when you remember that the world's climate is changing rapidly, and the ocean sea levels are rising. The Marshall Islands, in particular, face a graver threat from this than most other places.
In fact, since 1993, the sea levels within the Marshall Islands region have risen by about 0.3 inches per year. Based on forecasted sea levels, this could reach up to 4 or 5 additional feet by the end of this century alone. That's within our lifetimes and would effectively submerge most of these islands for good and the tomb itself. Potentially even collapsing the dome and releasing all of that incredible amount of radioactive waste inside. Since the tomb is already somewhat bobbing up and down with the tides today, it could present itself as a complete disaster scenario. Today, thousands of dead fish are washing up on the shore regularly due to the terrible radioactive waste already leaking into the surrounding water. The nuclear tomb on Runit Island has the potential to become one of the 21st century's greatest nuclear disasters.
So, you may ask, what is being done about all of this? Well, fortunately, we can report some progress. For instance, in 2020, [the National Defense Authorization Act/the U.S. bill that funds the U.S. military each year] mandated that [the Department of Energy/the Department in charge of the United States nuclear arsenal] conduct a report on the Runit dome's status. In that report, they determined that it's not in any immediate danger of collapse or failure. Even so, it remains to be seen if this will continue to be true over the next few decades, particularly if sea levels rise enough to submerge the dome.
As far as the Marshallese are concerned, however, much of the Marshall Islands are already uninhabitable due to the region's sizeable radioactive hazard. It has been reported that some islands are even more radioactive than Chernobyl. Around 650 residents live on only three of the 40 or so primary islands in the Atoll where Runit is located are unsafe for human habitation. The unfortunate fact is that the Marshallese don't have the capability or the funding to deal with this issue alone. They have to instead rely entirely upon America's willingness to clean up the mess they left behind for good. To date, the nuclear claims tribunal — an independent arbiter established by the U.S.-Marshall Islands compact to process and rule on claims — has ruled in their favor, awarding them more than $2 billion in damages. But the U.S. has paid out only $4 million, according to congressional testimony, and no enforcement mechanism exists.
In the last few years, the island nation’s claims have become more visible.
President Heine has achieved near-celebrity status at international events. The Marshall Islands recently secured a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, giving the nation another forum in which to raise its concerns.
A geopolitical shift also has given the islands new leverage. China has increased its reach into the central Pacific, providing aid and loans to dozens of nations, surpassing the United States as its largest trade partner.
“China is trying to erode U.S. influence in the region to weaken the U.S. military presence and create an opening for Chinese military access,” according to a 2018 report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressional committee.
In September, two of the United States staunchest allies in the Pacific — Kiribati and the Solomon Islands — severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan, embracing (Communist) China instead.
Washington has greeted those developments with concern.
In August, Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo flew to Micronesia to meet with the leaders of several Pacific island nations, including the Marshall Islands.
He announced the United States' intention to extend the compact with the Marshall Islands — providing aid in exchange for a secure military presence and working rights for Marshallese in the United States.
The announcement came as a surprise to the Marshallese, who were anticipating the expiration in 2023 of their compact, which includes annual grants from the U.S. that total about $30 million a year.
Marshallese officials read that as a sign that the islands have new negotiating power.
“These are matters of life and death for us,” said Jack Ading, the Enewetak senator. “We can’t afford to rely exclusively on reassurances from one source. We need neutral experts from the international community to weigh in, to confirm or challenge” previous U.S. findings.
Many Marshallese say they don’t want U.S. money or apologies but just a home in the Marshall Islands that is safe and secure.
Nerje Joseph holds out hope for a day when her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren can return to her ancestral home in Rongelap, and she can be buried in the sands of her youth, alongside her ancestors, under the coconut trees she remembers so well.
“In Los Angeles, you make movies about the Titanic. About people who lost everything,” she said.
“Why don’t you make movies about us?”
Well, it remains to be seen whether a more permanent solution to holding in the waste will come about or if this will become the world's next great nuclear disaster in the making because if the Runit dome deteriorates, all of its Radioactive poison will empty into the sea and will likely cause negative consequences beyond its borders. Whatever the future might hold for the fate of the dome on Runit Island, it takes time to learn how to solve or overcome any challenge.
20,544
The Issue
The world has had its fair share of nuclear disasters over the last half-century, including 1979 on three-mile island in Pennsylvania, the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986, and Fukushima, in Japan in 2011. However, few realize that another tremendous nuclear disaster is brewing elsewhere. Its location is so remote that it's no wonder you've probably never heard of it before. Five thousand miles west of Los Angeles and 500 miles north of the equator lies a small island chain known as the Marshall Islands. For many of us, these islands are best known as the birthplace of the movie monster "Godzilla," who was awakened and mutated from atomic bomb explosions at one of the many islands. Sadly, the islands may never actually end up spawning a terrifying lizard that breathes radioactive fire. They may still be just as frightening in the real world, if not even more so, very soon.
The Marshall Islands are remnants of ancient volcanoes that once protruded out from this region and were first settled nearly 3,000 years ago by the ancestors of the present-day Marshallese. These people crossed the ocean by boat through Asia and Polynesia. They lived a largely secluded and peaceful existence until the mid-1940s.
During World War II, the Japanese ruled the islands until the United States showed up and took them over in 1944. Very quickly, the American presence on the islands dramatically increased. American officials were eager to find a location to test their growing atomic arsenal as the Cold War began. The vast empty expansive ocean in this region that is nearly five times the size of California seemed to be the ideal spot. In fact, between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated a total of 67 nuclear devices across these islands, leaving all sorts of hazardous, radioactive waste behind.
The islands were even home to the biggest thermonuclear bomb ever tested by the United States government called "Castle Bravo." This experimental nuclear device created a mushroom cloud 4 ½ miles tall. Today, the bomb ranks as the third largest artificial explosion, equivalent to 15 megatons of TNT, making it 1,000 times as powerful as the Little Boy bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima. After the explosion, it dropped radioactive ash across 7,000 square miles of the surrounding area in and around the Marshall Islands. The Marshallese were not evacuated from their islands until three days after the bomb's detonation. Many would suffer from acute radiation sickness. While the heavy fallout also contaminated twenty-three additional members of a nearby Japanese fishing vessel. The initial blast vaporized the island where the bomb went off and created a crater 2,000 meters wide by 76 meters deep.
The last nuclear bomb the United States detonated on the islands was in 1958. Shortly afterward, the world began understanding the implications of sustained above-ground atomic testing. That is why in 1963, a treaty was signed amongst most of the world's nations that banned nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater, which still stands today. However, as far as the Marshall Islands were concerned, the U.S. had already done the damage.
All of this nuclear testing came at another horrible long-term price. That's because it also left behind an incredible amount of hazardous, radioactive waste. The United States government knew that it had to do something to clean its mess. As a result, they built a giant tomb to store all of this radioactive debris in the 1970s. They built it here on one of the most isolated islands in the chain called Runit. The tomb was built over an enormous existing crater from a previous nuclear test and kept off with a massive concrete dome to seal the harmful contents forever. The dome is 115 meters wide and 18 inches thick. Today, the tomb contains about 3.1 million cubic feet or 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools of nuclear waste. However, it doesn't just include all the nuclear waste that America generated on the Marshall Islands. The U.S. government also sent over 130 tons of radioactive soil and atomic debris from nuclear test sites in Nevada and threw all that into the tomb to join the Marshall Island debris. The tomb on Runit Island became one of America's largest storage sites for nuclear waste. While it's located over 7,000 miles from Washington, DC, it's only 665 miles from the Marshall Islands' capital city, Majuro.
The tomb's construction effort took three years to complete with the help of 4,000 U.S. service members. Six men died from acute radiation poisoning during the construction, and hundreds developed radiation-linked cancers from handling the hazardous wastes. All that dangerous waste includes all sorts of radiated equipment, soil, and plutonium lease chunks of concrete and metal. One particular isotope of plutonium housed inside the tomb, Plutonium-239, has a half-life of 24,100 years, which means it will take 24,100 years for the material to lose half of its radioactivity. However, what's even worse is that during the construction, the government failed to build a concrete lining underneath the dome and instead just relied upon the existing crater itself. As a result, seawater has slowly begun seeping into the tomb from the Pacific Ocean surrounding it. After it seeps in, it'll leak and take radioactive waste into the Pacific. Now, the Marshallese have to maintain a decades-old decaying structure while worrying about the future of what was once a pristine place. It's even more alarming when you remember that the world's climate is changing rapidly, and the ocean sea levels are rising. The Marshall Islands, in particular, face a graver threat from this than most other places.
In fact, since 1993, the sea levels within the Marshall Islands region have risen by about 0.3 inches per year. Based on forecasted sea levels, this could reach up to 4 or 5 additional feet by the end of this century alone. That's within our lifetimes and would effectively submerge most of these islands for good and the tomb itself. Potentially even collapsing the dome and releasing all of that incredible amount of radioactive waste inside. Since the tomb is already somewhat bobbing up and down with the tides today, it could present itself as a complete disaster scenario. Today, thousands of dead fish are washing up on the shore regularly due to the terrible radioactive waste already leaking into the surrounding water. The nuclear tomb on Runit Island has the potential to become one of the 21st century's greatest nuclear disasters.
So, you may ask, what is being done about all of this? Well, fortunately, we can report some progress. For instance, in 2020, [the National Defense Authorization Act/the U.S. bill that funds the U.S. military each year] mandated that [the Department of Energy/the Department in charge of the United States nuclear arsenal] conduct a report on the Runit dome's status. In that report, they determined that it's not in any immediate danger of collapse or failure. Even so, it remains to be seen if this will continue to be true over the next few decades, particularly if sea levels rise enough to submerge the dome.
As far as the Marshallese are concerned, however, much of the Marshall Islands are already uninhabitable due to the region's sizeable radioactive hazard. It has been reported that some islands are even more radioactive than Chernobyl. Around 650 residents live on only three of the 40 or so primary islands in the Atoll where Runit is located are unsafe for human habitation. The unfortunate fact is that the Marshallese don't have the capability or the funding to deal with this issue alone. They have to instead rely entirely upon America's willingness to clean up the mess they left behind for good. To date, the nuclear claims tribunal — an independent arbiter established by the U.S.-Marshall Islands compact to process and rule on claims — has ruled in their favor, awarding them more than $2 billion in damages. But the U.S. has paid out only $4 million, according to congressional testimony, and no enforcement mechanism exists.
In the last few years, the island nation’s claims have become more visible.
President Heine has achieved near-celebrity status at international events. The Marshall Islands recently secured a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, giving the nation another forum in which to raise its concerns.
A geopolitical shift also has given the islands new leverage. China has increased its reach into the central Pacific, providing aid and loans to dozens of nations, surpassing the United States as its largest trade partner.
“China is trying to erode U.S. influence in the region to weaken the U.S. military presence and create an opening for Chinese military access,” according to a 2018 report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressional committee.
In September, two of the United States staunchest allies in the Pacific — Kiribati and the Solomon Islands — severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan, embracing (Communist) China instead.
Washington has greeted those developments with concern.
In August, Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo flew to Micronesia to meet with the leaders of several Pacific island nations, including the Marshall Islands.
He announced the United States' intention to extend the compact with the Marshall Islands — providing aid in exchange for a secure military presence and working rights for Marshallese in the United States.
The announcement came as a surprise to the Marshallese, who were anticipating the expiration in 2023 of their compact, which includes annual grants from the U.S. that total about $30 million a year.
Marshallese officials read that as a sign that the islands have new negotiating power.
“These are matters of life and death for us,” said Jack Ading, the Enewetak senator. “We can’t afford to rely exclusively on reassurances from one source. We need neutral experts from the international community to weigh in, to confirm or challenge” previous U.S. findings.
Many Marshallese say they don’t want U.S. money or apologies but just a home in the Marshall Islands that is safe and secure.
Nerje Joseph holds out hope for a day when her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren can return to her ancestral home in Rongelap, and she can be buried in the sands of her youth, alongside her ancestors, under the coconut trees she remembers so well.
“In Los Angeles, you make movies about the Titanic. About people who lost everything,” she said.
“Why don’t you make movies about us?”
Well, it remains to be seen whether a more permanent solution to holding in the waste will come about or if this will become the world's next great nuclear disaster in the making because if the Runit dome deteriorates, all of its Radioactive poison will empty into the sea and will likely cause negative consequences beyond its borders. Whatever the future might hold for the fate of the dome on Runit Island, it takes time to learn how to solve or overcome any challenge.
20,544
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Petition created on August 26, 2022