- Oct 17, 2011
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Beginning in 1977, 4,000 US servicemen began collecting an estimated 73,000 cubic meters of tainted surface soil across the islands, according to the Marshall Islands’ government.
The material was then transported to Runit Island, where a 328-foot crater remained from a May 1958 test explosion. For three years, the American military dumped the material into the crater.
In 1980, a massive concrete dome – 18 inches thick and shaped like a flying saucer – was placed over the fallout debris, sealing off the material on Runit.
But the $218 million (£172 million) project was only supposed to be temporary until a more permanent site was developed, according to The Guardian. However, no further plans were ever hatched.
And now it's beginning to crack.
Worse yet, it's probably already leaking. On the list of Future Problems Waiting to Happen, somewhere near "You Only Moved the Headstones" is "You didn't line the 'temporary' nuclear waste site on an atoll that barely pokes out of the water"
“The bottom of the dome is just what was left behind by the nuclear weapons explosion,” Michael Gerrard, the chair of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, told ABC.
“It’s permeable soil. There was no effort to line it. And therefore, the seawater is inside the dome.”
The material was then transported to Runit Island, where a 328-foot crater remained from a May 1958 test explosion. For three years, the American military dumped the material into the crater.
In 1980, a massive concrete dome – 18 inches thick and shaped like a flying saucer – was placed over the fallout debris, sealing off the material on Runit.
But the $218 million (£172 million) project was only supposed to be temporary until a more permanent site was developed, according to The Guardian. However, no further plans were ever hatched.
And now it's beginning to crack.
Worse yet, it's probably already leaking. On the list of Future Problems Waiting to Happen, somewhere near "You Only Moved the Headstones" is "You didn't line the 'temporary' nuclear waste site on an atoll that barely pokes out of the water"
“The bottom of the dome is just what was left behind by the nuclear weapons explosion,” Michael Gerrard, the chair of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, told ABC.
“It’s permeable soil. There was no effort to line it. And therefore, the seawater is inside the dome.”