guardian | “Runit Dome represents a tragic confluence of nuclear testing and
climate change,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for
Climate Change Law at Columbia University, who visited the dome in 2010.
“It resulted from US nuclear testing and the leaving behind of large
quantities of plutonium,” he said. “Now it has been gradually submerged
as result of sea level rise from greenhouse gas emissions by industrial
countries led by the United States.”
Enewetak Atoll, and the much better-known Bikini Atoll, were the main
sites of the United States Pacific Proving Grounds, the setting for
dozens of atomic explosions during the early years of the cold war.
The remote islands – roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii –
were deemed sufficiently distant from major population centres and
shipping lanes, and in 1948, the local population of Micronesian
fishermen and subsistence farmers were evacuated to another atoll 200 km
away.
In total, 67 nuclear and atmospheric bombs were detonated on Enewetak
and Bikini between 1946 and 1958 – an explosive yield equivalent to 1.6
Hiroshima bombs detonated every day over the course of 12 years.
The detonations blanketed the islands with irradiated debris,
including Plutonium-239, the fissile isotope used in nuclear warheads,
which has a half-life of 24,000 years.
