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Under the dome: Fears Pacific nuclear 'coffin' is leaking
As nuclear explosions go, the US "Cactus" bomb test in May 1958 was relatively small—but it has left a lasting legacy for the Marshall Islands in a dome-shaped radioactive dump.
The dome—described by a UN chief Antonio Guterres as "a kind of coffin"—was built two decades after the blast in the Pacific ocean region.
The US military filled the bomb crater on Runit island with radioactive waste, capped it with concrete, and told displaced residents of the Pacific's remote Enewetak atoll they could safely return home.
But Runit's 45-centimetre (18-inch) thick concrete dome has now developed cracks.
And because the 115-metre wide crater was never lined, there are fears radioactive contaminants are leaching through the island's porous coral rock into the ocean.
The concerns have intensified amid climate change. Rising seas, encroaching on the low-lying nation, are threatening to undermine the dome's structural integrity.
Jack Ading, who represents the area in the Marshalls' parliament, calls the dome a "monstrosity".
"It is stuffed with radioactive contaminants that include plutonium-239, one of the most toxic substances known to man," he told AFP.
"The coffin is leaking its poison into the surrounding environment. And to make matters even worse, we're told not to worry about this leakage because the radioactivity outside of the dome is at least as bad as the radioactivity inside of it."
(Score: -1, Disagree) by Username on Tuesday May 28 2019, @12:28AM (5 children)
They just want more free money. It's well beyond the halflife of any dangerous radiation emitters, and anything that would have absorbed the heavy metals, would have already done so by now. The dome already did its job.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Absolutely.Geek on Tuesday May 28 2019, @12:56AM (3 children)
You should clearly go a purchase the land there; obviously this hoax will significantly depress property values. When you prove that this is all so much hot air you will make a killing in the market with the restored values.
You should live there also to protect your investment.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Tuesday May 28 2019, @03:28AM (2 children)
And eat the fish!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday May 28 2019, @03:48PM (1 child)
Ignore the multiple eyes, they just grow that way naturally.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday May 28 2019, @07:36PM
If natural selection tells you that fish with 7.5 eyes have better reproduction rates in that environment, who would you be to argue ?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @02:36AM
Only America would nuke someone's homeland, and then accuse them of being welfare cheats when they as for justice. The Marshallese were better off under Japanese occupation, and that is saying something.