[SM] the Marshall Islands' nuclear coffin is leaking

[RS Wood]

From the «wait until the tide rises» department:
Title: Under the Dome: Fears Pacific Nuclear 'Coffin' is Leaking
Author: Fnord666
Date: Mon, 27 May 2019 20:34:00 -0400
Link: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/05/27/0428236&from=rss

upstart[1] writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Under the dome: Fears Pacific nuclear 'coffin' is leaking[2]

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[3]—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[4]
, 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."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Original Submission[5]

Read more of this story[6] at SoylentNews.

Links:
[1]: http://soylentnews.org/~upstart/ (link)
[2]: https://phys.org/news/2019-05-dome-pacific-nuclear-coffin-leaking.html (link)
[3]: https://phys.org/tags/dome/ (link)
[4]: https://phys.org/tags/radioactive+waste/ (link)
[5]: http://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=34037 (link)
[6]: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/05/27/0428236&from=rss (link)


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