Scientists Warn Giant Nuclear Sarcophagus in Marshall Islands Is Leaking

[bananas]

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/scientists_warn_nuclear_sarcophagus_in_marshall_islands_is_leaking_20150703

Scientists Warn Giant Nuclear Sarcophagus in Marshall Islands Is Leaking
Posted on Jul 3, 2015

Runit Dome was built to store radioactive soil scraped from the various contaminated Enewetak Atoll islands. (U.S. Defense Special Weapons Agency)

One hundred and eleven thousand cubic yards of radioactive debris lie within Runit Dome in the Marshall Islands, a “hulking legacy of years of U.S. nuclear testing” whose fragile structure is vulnerable to breaking from violent weather associated with climate change.

“Runit Dome represents a tragic confluence of nuclear testing and climate change,” Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, who visited the dome in 2010, told The Guardian.

Now locals, scientists and environmental activists fear that a storm surge, typhoon or other cataclysmic event brought on by climate change could tear the concrete mantel wide open, releasing its contents into the Pacific Ocean. …

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.

When the testing came to an end, the US Defence Nuclear Agency (DNA – later the DoE) carried out an eight-year cleanup, but Congress refused to fund a comprehensive decontamination programme to make the entire atoll fit for human settlement again.

Read more here http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste

[NV Whino]

1. Gee, what a surprise

[bananas]

2. The Guardian has a short news video about it with the article.

The TruthDig article in the OP links to this much longer Guardian article which includes a short video:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste

This dome in the Pacific houses tons of radioactive waste – and it's leaking

The Runit Dome in the Marshall Islands is a hulking legacy of years of US nuclear testing. Now locals and scientists are warning that rising sea levels caused by climate change could cause 111,000 cubic yards of debris to spill into the ocean

(video)
The radioactive dome on Enewetak atoll.

Coleen Jose, Kim Wall and Jan Hendrik Hinzel on Runit Island
Friday 3 July 2015 06.00 EDT

Black seabirds circle high above the giant concrete dome that rises from a tangle of green vines just a few paces from the lapping waves of the Pacific. Half buried in the sand, the vast structure looks like a downed UFO.

At the summit, figures carved into the weathered concrete state only the year of construction: 1979. Officially, this vast structure is known as the Runit Dome. Locals call it The Tomb.

<snip>

Brackish water pools around the edge of the dome, where sections of concrete have started to crack away. Underground, radioactive waste has already started to leach out of the crater: according to a 2013 report by the US Department of Energy, soil around the dome is already more contaminated than its contents.

<snip>

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. IS leaking?????

The article seems to say they are afraid is MIGHT leak.

[bananas]

4. It IS leaking now, the sea is rising, and a big storm could crack it open like an egg.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste

<snip>

Brackish water pools around the edge of the dome, where sections of concrete have started to crack away. Underground, radioactive waste has already started to leach out of the crater: according to a 2013 report by the US Department of Energy, soil around the dome is already more contaminated than its contents.

Now locals, scientists and environmental activists fear that a storm surge, typhoon or other cataclysmic event brought on by climate change could tear the concrete mantel wide open, releasing its contents into the Pacific Ocean.

<snip>

But the dome was never meant to last. According to the World Health Organization, the $218m plan was designed as temporary fix: a way to store contaminated material until a permanent decontamination plan was devised.

Meanwhile, only three of the atoll’s 40 islands were cleaned up, but not Enjebi, where half of Enewetak’s population had traditionally lived. And as costs spiralled, resettlement efforts of the northern part of the atoll stalled indefinitely.

<snip>