{"id":261800,"date":"2025-11-04T10:59:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T10:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/261800\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T10:59:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T10:59:15","slug":"trump-nuclear-testing-can-forever-scar-a-nation-just-ask-the-marshall-islands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/261800\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump nuclear: Testing can forever scar a nation. Just ask the Marshall Islands"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n President Donald Trump\u2019s call for the United States to resume testing of nuclear weapons<\/a> last week has experts scratching their heads.\n <\/p>\n

\n What did he really mean<\/a> \u2013 exploding a warhead or testing delivery systems? Does he understand<\/a> how nuclear weapons work? How will US nuclear adversaries react?\n <\/p>\n

\n And some experts caution that the testing of nuclear warheads \u2013 creating actual nuclear explosions \u2013 hurts humans and can have lasting consequences for generations.\n <\/p>\n

\n Few people know the harm nuclear testing can do better than inhabitants of the Marshall Islands, a country of 1,200 islands and atolls in the Pacific, which was a US-administered trust territory of the United Nations from 1947 to 1986.\n <\/p>\n

\n As it developed its nuclear arsenal post-World War II, the US exploded 67 nuclear bombs there between 1946 and 1958.\n <\/p>\n

\"Mushroom-shaped<\/p>\n

\n Those detonations had the explosive equivalent of one Hiroshima-sized atomic bomb every day for 20 years, according to a 2025 report from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER).\n <\/p>\n

\n The radiation effects have been ruinous, according to US government reports cited by the Atomic Heritage Foundation, which said the testing was responsible for 55% of cancers on some of the islands\u2019 northern atolls.\n <\/p>\n

\n And the effect has been more widespread than in the islands. Scattered by winds in the atmosphere, the nuclear fallout from those tests has resulted in about 100,000 excess cancer deaths worldwide, according to the IEER study. Fallout hotspots were detected as far away as Sri Lanka and Mexico.\n <\/p>\n

\n Related diseases come from isotopes in the nuclear fallout that can penetrate the human body and cause mutations in DNA, according to a 2024 paper from the American Society of Clinical Oncology Journal.\n <\/p>\n

\n The isotopes can remain in the environment years after testing, afflicting those exposed with cancers including lung, leukemia, lymphoma, thyroid and breast, the paper says.\n <\/p>\n

\n And the US past nuclear tests weren\u2019t confined to the Pacific islands. The Nevada Test Site in the Mojave Desert saw 100 atmospheric tests from 1951 to 1962, and 828 underground tests, the last of those being in 1992.\n <\/p>\n

\n Though underground testing is considered safer, 32 of those tests in Nevada resulted in fallout escaping into the atmosphere, according to a 1993 UN report.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe know that nuclear testing has devastating consequences on communities and ecosystems throughout the United States, many of whom are still seeking reparations for harms caused by US nuclear testing during the Cold War,\u201d said Matt Korda, associate director at the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cResuming testing would almost certainly inflict new harms on those groups,\u201d Korda told CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n In the Marshall Islands, the wounds of nuclear testing are still raw.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t fiction, nor the distant past. It\u2019s a chapter of history still alive through the environment, the health of communities, and the data we\u2019re collecting today,\u201d Greenpeace activist Shaun Burnie wrote after visiting the islands earlier this year.\n <\/p>\n

\n The environmental group staged a voyage to the Marshall Islands from March to April this year to document their state and to take scientific samples that will go into a coming report on the islands.\n <\/p>\n

\n On tiny Runit Island, part of Enewetak Atoll, sits \u201cthe dome,\u201d a structure 377 feet (115 meters) in diameter, made of concrete about half-a-meter thick. Underneath it lies 85,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste gathered in a 1970s effort to clean up the islands, according to Greenpeace.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n Because the crater beneath the dome is not lined, as newer nuclear waste disposal sites are, \u201cthese substances are not only confined to the crater \u2013 they are also found across the island\u2019s soil, rendering Runit Island uninhabitable for all time,\u201d Burnie wrote after the organization\u2019s visit.\n <\/p>\n

\n The island \u201cmay be one of the most radioactive places in the world,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n And with climate change, rising sea levels now threaten the structural integrity of the aging dome. No one\u2019s really sure how far the effects of that waste might spread.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThat dome is the connection between the nuclear age and the climate change age,\u201d activist Alson Kelen said in a 2018 report from the Australian NGO Safeground.\n <\/p>\n

\n Burnie said the radiation in the environment has changed the lives of the 300 current residents of the entire Enewetak Atoll. It\u2019s been taken up by the roots of their coconut palms, contaminating the fruit, making it unmarketable.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe radioactive legacy has robbed them of income and opportunity,\u201d Burnie said of the islanders.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s not just agriculture that\u2019s been affected, according to the IEER report. As their way of life has deteriorated, traditional skills have been lost, such as the skill to navigate the open ocean, a necessity for commerce and even reproduction.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cReading the waves was \u2018indispensable as the sole means of collecting food, trading goods, waging war and locating unrelated sexual partners,\u2019\u201d the IEER report says, quoting a 2016 New York Time Magazine report on island mariners.\n <\/p>\n

\n Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2024, UN Deputy High Commissioner Nada Al-Nashif said the legacy of testing has disconnected indigenous Marshallese from their culture.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe human rights impacts of the nuclear legacy are not limited to what is known and easily quantifiable. They are also rooted in pain that cannot be measured and facts that remain unknown,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

Castle Bravo and Bikini Atoll<\/p>\n

\n About 200 miles to the east of Enewetak is Bikini Atoll, the site of the largest nuclear weapons test ever conducted by the US. Known as Castle Bravo, it was a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.\n <\/p>\n

\n In 1946, Bikini Atoll had 167 residents. Before the Castle Bravo test, US Navy officers persuaded them to leave their homes, \u201cfor the good of mankind.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cHe explained that they were a chosen people and that perfecting atomic weapons could prevent future wars,\u201d and that one day they\u2019d be allowed to return, an Atomic Heritage Foundation history says.\n <\/p>\n

\"Rongelap<\/p>\n

\n Today, Bikini is uninhabited, spare a few caretakers. Radiation levels remain too high for full-time habitation, something that was determined after Bikinians were allowed to return in 1969 and began suffering radiation-related illnesses. The island was closed again in 1978.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cMost of the new generations of Bikinians have never seen their home island,\u201d Greenpeace\u2019s Burnie wrote.\n <\/p>\n

\n Greenpeace\u2019s final stop on its island tour this year was Rongelap Atoll, which was blanketed by ash from the Castle Bravo test on Bikini, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) to the northwest.\n <\/p>\n

\n In a 2024 report, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) talked about the effects of that ash \u2013 called \u201cBikini snow\u201d \u2013 on the population.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt burned their skin and eyes, and they quickly developed symptoms of acute radiation sickness,\u201d the report said.\n <\/p>\n

\n And the effects lingered.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\"Members<\/p>\n

\n \u201cFor decades after the tests, women in the Marshall Islands gave birth to severely deformed babies at unusually high rates. Those born alive rarely survived more than a few days. Some had translucent skin and no discernible bones. They would refer to them as \u2018jellyfish babies,\u2019 for they could scarcely be recognised as human beings, the ICAN report said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Wanting relief from the effects, Rongelap residents evacuated the island in 1985 with the help of Greenpeace, resettling on two islands in Kwajalein Atoll, both just a handful of miles from the US military\u2019s active Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, which it says supports nuclear-capable missile testing as well as intercepts.\n <\/p>\n

\n While the Marshall Islands hasn\u2019t seen a nuclear test since 1958 \u2013 the current US test site is underground in Nevada \u2013 the last test in the Pacific was in 1996, by France, one of 193 tests Paris conducted at South Pacific atolls over 30 years.\n <\/p>\n

\n Approximately 110,000 people suffered from radiation illnesses from the French tests, according to a 2021 report from the French investigative journalism site Disclose, Princeton University and Norwegian NGO Interprt.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n \u201cLeukemia, lymphoma, cancer of the thyroid, lung, breast, stomach \u2026 In Polynesia, the experience of French nuclear tests is written in the flesh and blood of the inhabitants,\u201d the report says.\n <\/p>\n

\n That last French test, on January 27, 1996, resulted in large international protests and a boycott of French goods.\n <\/p>\n

\n A day later, then French President Jacques Chirac announced his country would no longer test nuclear weapons.\n <\/p>\n

\n At the end of July 1996, China tested a nuclear device at its Lop Nur site in remote northwestern Xinjiang. It would be the last test by a major nuclear power.\n <\/p>\n

\n In September 1996, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) opened for signature. It obligates signees \u201cnot to carry out any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The US, Russia and China quickly signed it but have not ratified it. Still, the three powers have abided by it, even though it remains unenforceable as it still needs the ratification of nine states.\n <\/p>\n

\n The only nuclear tests known to have been conducted worldwide since 1996 are by India (two in 1998), Pakistan (two in 1998) and North Korea (six from 2006 to 2017). None of those countries had signed the treaty.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump\u2019s social media post on Thursday calling for the US to begin testing again is raising fears of a new nuclear arms race \u2013 and more devastating consequences for the people of the planet.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThis is a perilous moment,\u201d read a statement from the anti-nuclear group Ploughshares, calling the US president\u2019s announcement \u201creckless, needless and dangerous.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n As the US would test its weapons under the Nevada desert, the Marshall Islands is highly unlikely to see another nuclear explosion within its borders.\n <\/p>\n

\n But the islands will forever have a testament to the effects of nuclear weapons.\n <\/p>\n

\n The radioactive half-life of plutonium-239, one of the remnants of US nuclear testing there, is 24,110 years.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump\u2019s call for the United States to resume testing of nuclear weapons last week has experts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-261800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}