In 1954 the US conducted nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, 67 tests in fact. Before leaving they took the radioactive materials and plutonium and buried them under a dome on a low lying atoll. But climate change has come to the Marshall Islands, and the rising seas are a threat to that dome and may destroy it because rising seas could unseal the toxic bomb inside the dome. But nothing is being done. Meanwhile the Marshallese are experiencing a much higher level of thyroid cancer. Many families are and have been affected. It is safe to say the conditions have created a crisis for them. Climate change is affecting the whole of the islands, no more pristine coral reefs, high water temperatures, as high as 96 degrees, are killing thousands of black angelfish, pufferfish and other marine life, and the rising sea threatens inundations. The government is planning to build sea walls, but how long they will last is not known, nor how long before another nuclear disaster occurs. Several countries now have nuclear weapons besides the US, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, France, several are on their way like Iran and North Korea, or are now trying to obtain them like Saudi Arabia, not to speak of non-state entities like terrorist groups. While the Marshall Islands is an example of the consequences of what the pursuit of those weapons and the accompanying testing inevitably entails, they also stand for what happens when the unforeseen happens, when those consequences intersect with climate change and the problems it brings. Hopefully the whole situation and the dangers it poses will be a reminder of how dangerous nuclear weapons are for the world, for the survivors, for the countries involved and for how unpredictable disposing of radioactive materials can be. And perhaps in an oblique way it will also be a reminder of how imperative addressing climate change now is.
Where Nuclear Fallout and Climate Change Meet
