In Fiji last week, he told a crowd about "a kind of coffin" built by the US in the Marshall Islands to house the deadly radioactive debris from the 1980s.

The "coffin" is the product of a belated American response to the nuclear testing of the 1940s and 1950s.

In 1977, the Defence Nuclear Agency began a sustained cleanup of the nuclear debris remaining on Enewetak Atoll, a slender archipelago in the Marshall Islands' northwest corner.

The material was transported to Runit Island where a 100-metre 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 - 45 centimetres thick and shaped like a flying saucer - was placed over the fallout debris, sealing off the material on Runit.

The US$218 million (NZ$335m) project was supposed to be only temporary until a more permanent site was developed, according to the Guardian newspaper. However, no further plans were ever hatched.

Now, disrepair and rising sea tides are making it a dangerously vulnerable site.

A strong storm could breach the dome, releasing the deadly nuclear waste.

The staying power of the material is a problem. Cracks reportedly have started to appear in the dome.

The concrete is only 45 centimetres thick and the ocean is rising.

The crater was never properly lined, so rising seawater could breach the structural integrity.

"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 the ABC. "It's permeable soil. There was no effort to line it. And therefore, the seawater is inside the dome."

According to the Guardian, a 2013 report by the Energy Department admitted radioactive material may have already begun to leak from the dome but cautioned the health risks were likely low.

"That dome is the connection between the nuclear age and the climate change age," climate change activist Alson Kelen told the ABC.

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• theguardian.com
• Image: Screenshot abc.net.au

It was constructed in 1979 to temporarily store nuclear waste produced from nuclear testing by the United States military during the Cold War.

Residents have expressed concerns about cracks which are slowly developing in the dome's concrete surface.

The US Department of Energy insists the cracks are cosmetic, a result of drying and shrinking of the half-submerged dome, but there are plans for repairs.

Radio New Zealand's correspondent Giff Johnson has also expressed concern that the atoll may have been washed over with radioactive waste, after the island was hit by Typhoon Nangka earlier this month.

There are fears that the storm may have churned up lagoon sediment which is laced with nuclear waste.

"Did this stir up a lot of the plutonium and radioactive waste that's in the sediment, because actually what is more radioactive than what's in the dome is what's in the lagoon sediment."

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.

The Vatican has long opposed nuclear weapons, but Pope Francis is making the cause one of the top diplomatic priorities.

Source

• radionnz.co.nz
• www.truthdig.com
• www.worldbulletin.net
• Image: www.news.com.au

"I cry everytime I tell the story of this five-year-old girl because I'm also a mother, and I believe every mother would feel heartbroken when she sees this picture and hears the story," Sinan Mavivo, an anti-nuclear activist and resident of Lanyu, told a news conference in Taipei, while showing a picture of a five-year-old girl whose head was wrapped in gauze.

"When I first saw her, I thought she was wearing a mask, but no, it was gauze. She has to wear it because she has to undergo several treatments for brain tumor, and since she's so little, the procedure has to be done through her mouth," Sinan Mavivo said.