The Nuclear and Climate Curse of the Marshall Islands

In the Marshall Islands, rising sea levels threaten leakage from a radioactive wastepile deposited and abandoned by the US after its nuclear tests in the 1940s and 50s. Warming lagoons and sea level rise have affected local livelihoods, and much of the Islands are projected to be underwater by 2100.

The United States conducted 67 nuclear test detonations on the Pikinni and Anewetak Atolls of the low-lying atoll nation of the Marshall Islands from 1946 to 1958. In the aftermath of the tests in the 1970s, the U.S. buried 100,000 cubic yards of radioactive soil and debris in an unlined nuclear test crater known as the Runit Dome or the Cactus Crater containment structure, located on Runit Island on Enewetak Atoll. The National Research Council of Washington, D.C. then noted in 1982 that the structure of the Dome could be breached by the region’s severe typhoons.

In the hours after exposure to radiation in 1954, medical examiners from the U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute and the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory detected high levels of radioactivity in drinking water and on the surfaces of plants in the two atolls. Affected residents suffered vomiting, diarrhoea, nausea, itchy and burning skin and eyes, skin lesions, hair loss, and lowered counts of white blood cells and platelets. The U.S. estimates that it has to date paid more than USD600 million to affected communities.

In 1985, the U.S. accepted responsibility for the loss and damage caused by the tests, but its nuclear legacy in the Dome remains in situ.

The U.S. Department of Energy reported in 2020 that, while the concrete cap covering the Dome fulfils its purpose in preventing erosion, the Dome is “vulnerable to wave driven over wash and flooding caused by storm surge and potential effects of sea level rise”.

Dr. Michael Gerrard of Columbia Law School was less persuaded of the integrity of the Dome. In 2015, he wrote: “The dome lacks any liner at the bottom, a secure cap on top, or a system to collect water, and is placed above fractured rock and next to the water and below sea level—a municipal landfill could not be built in such a way.” “One day,” he concludes, “the Runit dome will likely be submerged or torn apart by storms.”

It is expected that, under a high carbon emissions scenario, sea levels will rise in the Marshall Islands by up to 16cm by 2030, or up to 62cm by 2090, increasing the impact of storm surges and coastal flooding. Without adaptation, an 80-cm rise in sea level could leave two thirds of the country submerged.

Researchers predict that temperatures will continue to rise in the Marshall Islands, typhoons will decrease in frequency, ocean acidification will continue, and rainfall will increase.

In the urban atolls of the Marshall Islands, housing almost three quarters of the Islands’ residents, inhabitants have already experienced the effects of rising sea and surface temperatures in the form of droughts, coral bleaching, more frequent flooding, and more intense cyclones. Continued ocean warming may soon add to that list the collapse of reefs, saline intrusion into the aquifer, more frequent storm surges, and recurring king tides.

The World Bank recommends a pathway of protection, raise, reclamation, relocation, and migration. However, longer-term solutions such as raising and reclaiming are expensive, complex, and time-intensive endeavours, and relocation and migration require the loss of community and homes.

Apart from the World Bank’s US$30million Urban Resilience Project, the U.S. must take full responsibility for the lasting by-products of its detonations, excavate the Runit Dome safely and completely, and finish what it started.

Image source: https://www.bikiniatoll.info/nuclear-testing-at-bikini-atoll/