
How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.latimes.com/projects/marshall-islands-nuclear-testing-sea-level-rise/
======
svara
This is terrifying and so sad. Here they're talking about plans to resettle
the displaced local population back to the location of a nuclear bomb test:

""" U.S. government documents from the time show that officials weighed the
potential hazards of radiation exposure against “the current low morale of the
natives” and a “risk of an onset of indolence.” Ultimately they decided to go
forward with the resettlement so researchers could study the effects of
lingering radiation on human beings.

“Data of this type has never been available,” Merrill Eisenbud, a U.S official
with the Atomic Energy Commission, said at a January 1956 meeting of the
agency’s Biology and Medicine Committee. “While it is true that these people
do not live the way that Westerners do, civilized people, it is nonetheless
also true that they are more like us than the mice. """

~~~
mirimir
Back in the 40s-60s, the AEC was also cool with radiation exposure testing on
US troops, poor Black people, prisoners, etc.

Edit: Plus Japanese, of course. And, arguably, the entire US population.

~~~
vectorEQ
that makes it so much better... These scientists knew exactly what they were
doing and what the fallout would be. They just chose to dump the large part on
some foreign place and continue to this day to lie and deceive these peoples.
not to say they were the only one. but it's sick, and that's it. nothing else
to it. They should by now in 2019 know better and respond better.

~~~
mirimir
Yes, they knowingly engaged in human experimentation. And they should do
whatever it takes now to mitigate the damage.

------
LatteLazy
Technically this waste became the problem of the Marshall Islands when they
became independent in 1979. That was the time to negotiate with the US about
the remaining waste. This is similar to how Chernobyl is a Ukrainian issue.

That said, the islanders still have a lot of options. As a free and
independent nation, they own the waste with all it's problems BUT also with
all it's advantages.

Call the Iranians, the North Koreans, the Indians, the Pakistanis and anyone
else with cash and ambition (ISIS, the Saudis?). Tell them you have 30 olympic
sized pools worth of plutonium-containing waste and you're holding an auction
for it on April 1st next year. More than enough for 1000 dirty bombs or maybe
even a few high yield A-bombs if they can be bothered to refine it.

Then watch the western world beat a path to your door to talk about how much
they want to take the same material for "safe keeping" and how the "global
community" is "excited to help".

What was it Churchill said: "You can rely on the US (the western world) to do
the right thing; once they have exhausted every other option".

~~~
Heliosmaster
Another idea to "force" US hand is to make it their problem in other ways. Dig
it up, and threaten to leave it / break it on a place where currents flow
towards continental United States.

Of course this should never be done, as it is some sort of eco-terrorism, but
is one of the many ways the US can have their hands forced.

Edit: in case this is not clear, I am never advocating for something like this
to happen. But it is always a stupid idea to leave potentially lethal and
dangerous materials on the land of a place you've scarred and destroyed and
which doesn't want it at all.

~~~
adventured
> Dig it up, and threaten to leave it / break it on a place where currents
> flow towards continental United States.

Declaring war on the United States with a threat of intentional nuclear
warfare against its population would be a particularly bad idea. That'll get
your sovereignty revoked very quickly via military occupation.

The response to what I said of course is: yeah but the US is doing a bad
thing. That's correct and it changes absolutely nothing about the fact that
declaring nuclear war on the US, declaring the intention to try to harm its
people with nuclear material, is a bad idea. Fairness is never going to exist
between a superpower and weaker nations, it never has, it never will. The
superpower dictates the terms in nearly all cases.

~~~
LatteLazy
Well that's fine too: the US will then need to deal with it's new colony's
nuclear waste legacy! "Oh no, we lost and got everything we needed!" :)

Isn't there an old film where a small island declares independence from the
US, declares war on the US and then surrenders after 5 minutes to get aid?

(Edited because I think it's actually colony's not colonies)

~~~
edorrington
It’s a film called “The Mouse that Roared” with Peter Sellers; a very funny
movie
([https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053084/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053084/)).

~~~
Ididntdothis
I remember the buzzing of the Q bomb.

------
cyberferret
Why is it, when reading this article, all I can picture is that meme of the SS
officer saying "Wait a minute... Are WE the baddies?".

I am starting to interpret a lot of things I took for granted in my younger
years with a different viewpoint, and I am increasingly horrified when I do,
as the perceptions I've always had that most Western countries are the
benevolent benefactors is tainted by stories such as this, which shows a
brutal, callous disregard for other sovereign nations.

~~~
tekkk
Well when you look down the history you'll find every nation did something
horrible (if they have existed long enough). US itself is quite special case
in its imperialism which happened much later than the others's (Spain,
Netherlands etc).

But coming back to present day, it's the actions that we do now that in my
opinion matter the most. And US keeps failing on those still, time after time.
European countries are in some regards better, but well we are still far away
from that utopian society where all things are in perfect balance.

It's sad though that US can't take responsibility for their own nuclear waste.
They spend billions on their armed forces yet fixing the aftermath of their
nuclear bomb tests can't be fit into that budget? Makes no sense.

~~~
digitalengineer
I think the people in former Yugoslavia and also the Middle East would love to
see the army pick up after itself. Especially the depleted uranium ammunition
turns the areas it was used in into a wasteland. I remember a British
researcher pulling _one_ used round from a water-tank and brining it home. The
airport in the UK went NUTS. One round... The army used 1000 tons of depleted
uranium munitions in 3 weeks during the 2003 Iraq war.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Ammunition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Ammunition)

~~~
saagarjha
Then again, airports are remarkably touchy about many things that aren’t all
that bad.

------
newnewpdro
There's a small hardcover book I found while rummaging through books taken out
of circulation at a public library called "Bombs over Bikini" which documents
the nuclear tests done over these islands and how the US deceived the
Marshallese people.

Its size and format is targeted at children, and contains many photos from the
era. It's a very surreal book to page through, leaving me speechless and
curious why it would be taken out of circulation. I ended up buying it with a
$1 "donation".

[https://www.amazon.com/Bombs-over-Bikini-Disaster-
Nonfiction...](https://www.amazon.com/Bombs-over-Bikini-Disaster-
Nonfiction/dp/146771612X)

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18354016-bombs-over-
biki...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18354016-bombs-over-bikini)

------
stuzenz
As someone who lives in the South Pacific - in a nuclear free country what's
more - the whole affair makes me upset and sad.

The sad irony in the below article is hard to miss.

[https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-11-14/marshal...](https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-11-14/marshall-
islands-runit-nuclear-waste-dome-site-
graffiti?fbclid=IwAR2xTPxV1u_orSTuXT8pfCjCEroMvMx24edGqAy6QRUOTAaJ2dI7X2uoSsA)

It probably gives you some perspective on why people outside of the States are
often perplexed on why the US can lead discussions on nuclear nonproliferation
when they continue to be a bad actor.

The above linked article is reasonable evidence U.S government is more
concerned about their image than doing the right thing.

------
einpoklum
The Marshall Islanders never had any reason to trust the US. These poor people
will be crushed by imperial interest and there is very little they can do
about it.

While all this is happening, the Marshall Islands continues to lend a UN GA
vote to those exact US interests. For example, they are a staunch friend of
Israel against near-unanimous international condemnations, and other such
ridiculous votes.

This is sad and tragic, and I hope it gives the US citizens among you some
pause regarding what is being done in your name.

PS - Don't expect this to change after the elections.

------
julienfr112
Just send an email inviting Iran to come and get the plutonium. Before the
email even left your server, US money and people from three letters agencies
will start raining ....

~~~
adventured
Your premise is the worst possible choice, next to the other person that
suggested starting a nuclear war against the US with the material. Emailing
the Iranians to come get it will get you blockaded, sanctioned and occupied by
the US military if all else fails. The Iranians aren't close to being stupid
enough to act on it.

~~~
thawaway1837
For some reason some of these ideas on this comment section remind me of those
Coke employees who stole the “secret formula” and tried to sell it to Pepsi.

Pepsi, unsurprisingly, immediately called the cops and had them arrested.

------
senorjazz
The John Pilger documentary "The Coming War with China" has a big section on
the Marshall Islands, I was ignorant of the situation there and found it
interesting.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDl9ecICIYg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDl9ecICIYg)

~~~
nisse72
I also recommend his doco "The War on Democracy"

[http://johnpilger.com/videos/the-war-on-
democracy](http://johnpilger.com/videos/the-war-on-democracy)

------
austincheney
The language and title of the article seem a bit loaded, though there isn't
any reason to question the basic facts of the article.

While it is true that entire islands were blown away and lagoons contaminated
with waste from test detonations there was probably only one blast that
probably directly and permanently impacted people in the area: Castle Bravo.

Castle Bravo was a test failure that made the Bikini Atoll famous, because the
explosion was stupendously larger than the planned detonation. That test was
supposed to be a secret experiment, but because it was so large it became an
instantly known international incident. Wikipedia says the planned detonation
was 6 megatons, though video documentary puts the planned detonation at closer
to 4.5 megatons. Even still it would have been the largest man-made explosion
to that point.

The actual explosion was somewhere between 14.5-15.5 megatons. The failure was
a misunderstanding of basic chemistry under nuclear conditions. Scientists
knew at the time that explosive force could be multiplied by an order of
magnitude by wrapping a nuclear bomb device in fissile material thereby
creating a multi-stage detonation. The first stage is the nuclear bomb itself
and the second stage is the reaction of the fissile material to the intense
heat and pressure thereby becoming fuel for an additional layer of explosion
not used by the initial nuclear detonation.

The reason for a multi-stage devise is that a nuclear core has a specific job
and the fuel of the second stage would not help achieve that job. The second
stage only becomes valid once the first stage is complete. But that second
stage fuel isn't stable. It is a rapidly decaying material, which in this case
was radio isotope lithium 6. To increase stability the second stage material
was wrapped in a blanket of lithium 7. lithium 7 is a heavier radio isotope,
but it does not decay in a way that makes it a fissile material. Specifically,
Lithium 6 decays into tritium when bombarded with neutrons and tritium is a
very unstable radio isotope of hydrogen with 3 neutrons that is the core of
the infamous H-bomb.

What scientists didn't know at the time is that under the heat and pressure of
a nuclear detonation lithium 7 sheds a neutron and rapidly becomes lithium 6.
That effectively means Castle Bravo was the first 3 stage nuclear bomb where
all material supplied decayed in a specific order to become fuel in separate
stages and each stage magnifying the explosive capability.

Local islanders were impacted by that detonation, but so were many American
observers and scientists 30 miles away. The local islanders, and a Japanese
fishing vessel, were further away than the Americans in that area, but were in
the path of high altitude wind flow. The largest environmental failure from
this was the inability to contain the resulting toxins. Trace amounts of
fallout would eventually reason Japan, India, and the US. The entire local
region was contaminated in a way that would only be understood or measurable
over decades due to the increased presence of heavy metals in the ground and
water resulting in toxic food supplies and heavy metal poisoning.

* Castle Bravo - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo)

* Radio Isotopes of Lithium - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_lithium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_lithium)

* Bikini Atoll - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll)

* A good video documentary - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM4ZYQmFGlw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM4ZYQmFGlw)

~~~
gus_massa
Nitpicking:

> _The failure was a misunderstanding of basic chemistry under nuclear
> conditions._

> _What scientists didn 't know at the time is that under the heat and
> pressure of a nuclear detonation lithium 7 sheds a neutron and rapidly
> becomes lithium 6._

I thought that it's very strange that chemistry is involved here and that the
heat and pressure cause that, so I looked in Wikipedia:

> _When lithium-7 is bombarded with energetic neutrons, rather than simply
> absorbing a neutron, it captures the neutron and decays almost instantly
> into an alpha particle, a tritium nucleus, and another neutron._

So the cause is an unexpected _nuclear_ reaction, not an unexpected _chemical_
reaction.

------
monster_group
FTA - “While it is true that these people do not live the way that Westerners
do, civilized people, it is nonetheless also true that they are more like us
than the mice.”

I find this statement callous and shocking. I get what she is trying to say
but to me it seems a very poor choice of words.

------
aritmo
Is there a list of similar or bigger issues than this nuclear disaster?

