Ariana Tibon was in college at the University of Hawaiʻi in 2017 when she saw the photo online: a black-and-white photo of a man holding a baby. The caption said: “Nelson Anjain having his baby monitored by an AEC RadSafe team member on Rongelap on March 2, 1954 two days after `Bravo’.”
Tibon had never seen the man before. But she recognized the name as her great grandfather. At the time, he was living on Rongelap in the Marshall Islands when the US was conducting Castle Bravo, the largest of 67 nuclear weapons tests there during the Cold War. The tests displaced and sickened indigenous people, poisoned fish, changed traditional food practices, and caused cancers and other negative health effects that still reverberate today.
A federal report by the Government Accountability Office published last month, examines what remains of that nuclear contamination, not only in the Pacific but also in Greenland and Spain. The authors conclude that climate change may disturb nuclear waste left in Greenland and the Marshall Islands. “Rising sea levels could spread pollution into RMI, and conflicting risk assessments cause residents to distrust radiological information from the US Department of Energy,” the report said.
In Greenland, chemical contamination and radioactive liquid are frozen in sheets of ice, left over from a nuclear power plant at a US military research base where scientists studied the potential to install nuclear missiles. The report did not specify how or where nuclear contamination might migrate into the Pacific Ocean or Greenland, or what, if any, health risks it might pose to people living nearby. However, the authors noted that frozen waste in Greenland could be exposed by 2100.
“The possibility to influence the environment is there, which can further influence the food chain and also further influence the people living in the area,” said Hjalmar Dahl, president of Inuit Circumpolar Council Greenland. The country is about 90 percent Inuit. “I think it is important that the Greenlandic and American governments communicate about this worrying issue and prepare what to do about it.”
The authors of the GAO study wrote that Greenland and Denmark have not proposed any cleanup plans, but also cited studies that say much of the nuclear waste has already expired and will be diluted by melting ice. However, those studies note that chemical waste such as polychlorinated biphenylsman-made chemicals better known as carcinogenic PCBs “may be the most consequential waste at Camp Century.”
The report summarizes disagreements between Marshall Islands officials and the US Department of Energy over the risks posed by US nuclear waste. The GAO recommends that the agency adopt a communications strategy to convey information about the potential for contamination to the Marshallese people.
Nathan Anderson, a director at the Government Accountability Office, said that the United States’ responsibilities in the Marshall Islands “are defined by specific federal statutes and international agreements.” He noted that the government of the Marshall Islands had previously agreed to settle claims related to damage from US nuclear tests.
“It has been the longstanding position of the US government that, under that agreement, the Republic of the Marshall Islands bears full responsibility for its lands, including those used for the nuclear testing program.”
For Tibon, who is back home in the Marshall Islands and currently chairs the National Nuclear Commission, the fact that the report’s only recommendation is a new communications strategy is mystifying. She is not sure how this would help the Marshallese people.
“What we need now is action and implementation on environmental remediation. We don’t need a communication strategy,” she said. “If they know it’s contaminated, why wasn’t the recommendation for next steps about environmental remediation, or what’s possible to bring these lands back to safe and livable conditions for these communities?”
The Biden administration recently agreed to fund a new museum to commemorate those affected by nuclear testing as well as climate change initiatives in the Marshall Islands, but the initiatives have repeatedly failed to garner support from Congress, despite being part of a continued treaty with the Marshall Islands and a broader national security effort to bolster goodwill in the Pacific to counter China.
