Why bikini atoll

In the early 's, the Bikinians filed a class action lawsuit against the U. Since then the leaders of the people of Bikini residing on Kili Island and Majuro Atoll have been confronted with the immense responsibility of determining how to clean their atoll while at the same time maintaining the health and welfare of their displaced population. For the community and their leaders, grappling with these technical decisions has created a life of strife, debate and conflict-and an uncertain future.

Now, a radiological cleanup of Bikini is expected to begin sometime within The objective of this paper, with the support of the views and the recollections of elder Bikinians, is to recount the history and discuss issues facing the first displaced people of the nuclear age.

Abstract The people of Bikini Atoll were moved from their homeland in to make way for the testing of 23 nuclear weapons by the United States government, beginning with the world's fourth atomic detonation. Only days later were they moved to Kwajalein Atoll for medical care. Bravo was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bombs that were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Aerial photos of Bikini now show the greatest physical scar left over from the nuclear testing period: where there had once been islands and reef there is now a gaping, blue, sea-filled crater a mile wide and ft deep.

Back on Kili Island, life for the Bikinians had become a battle for survival. When the circumstances presented themselves, the islanders complained bitterly to any US government official who would listen, reminding these officials about the broken US promise that their people would be taken care of as long as they were away from their homeland.

In , US government agencies finally began considering the possibility of returning the Bikinian people to their islands based on what they knew of radiation levels on Bikini Atoll from the US scientific community.

Accordingly, in June of , President Lyndon B Johnson promised the Bikinians living on Kili that they would now be able to return to their islands. The US Atomic Energy Commission, in an effort to assure the islanders that its clean-up efforts were successful, issued a statement that said: "There's virtually no radiation left and we can find no discernible effect on either plant or animal life. Approximately people resettled Bikini in the early s. By September of , however, the Bikinians' dreams of living on their home islands came to an end.

It was then that Trust Territory officials arrived on Bikini to again evacuate the people who were living on the atoll because they had discovered that the radioactive element most prevalent on Bikini, cesium , had travelled through the food chain and into the bodies of the islanders.

US Department of Interior officials called the huge increases in the islanders' levels of cesium "Incredible". Because the cesium has contaminated the land-based food chain, the islanders have not lived on the atoll since the second exodus in There is no radiological danger posed to an individual walking around on the island, and one can live safely on Bikini as long as the food is imported. The fish on Bikini are safe to eat, and have been for some time.

The major concern of the Bikinians is the fear they have for their children, whom they believe would not understand the prohibitions against eating the ripened fruit from the trees or drinking the coconuts, and this has prevented their return. The Bikinians are now demanding that the US restore their atoll to the way it was prior to the nuclear testing in Though Bikini is not available for the Bikinians to live on, it has not been abandoned.

In the early s, when divers and tourism entrepreneurs began showing a keen interest in what Bikini's pristine environment and lagoon had to offer, the local government began to consider opening a resort for tourists. After much planning and construction, Bikini Atoll opened to visitors in June to provide an economic base for a possible future resettlement of Bikini Atoll.

The two atomic bomb blasts of Operation Crossroads were both about the size of the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki in Japan. The July 1 Able shot, dropped from a plane, drifted a half-mile off target and sunk only a few of the ships that had been set in an anchored array for the test. Radiological for Bikini Island have been developed from samples collected and analyzed as part of a continuing environmental monitoring program on Bikini Atoll These on-going studies have concentrated on assessing the uptake and Definition: Remediation is the actions taken to reduce risks to human health or the environment posed by the presence of radioactive or hazardous materials.

For example, the estimated effective half-life of cesium on Bikini, Enewetak, and Rongelap Atolls is around 8 to 9. These findings suggest that predictive Definition: The scientific process used to determine radiation dose and uncertainty in the dose. With this knowledge, Livermore scientists have directed their scientific studies on Bikini Island towards quantifying the rates of environmental loss of cesium using lysimeters and measuring the amount of cesium washed out of the soil into the underlying groundwater.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have also developed an understanding of the residence time of the fresh water lens and associated contaminants on the island. Preliminary data also suggests that labile soil cesium is slowly being incorporated into more resistant mineral phases within the soil and, through aging effects, may be becoming less available for soil-to-plant transfer.

The lysimeter and ground water sampling program was terminated in December so the results from these studies should become available over the next year. Although the mechanisms involved and the impact of adding potassium on soil cesium mobility is not fully understood, the data and information stemming from the research and monitoring program on Bikini Island will enable more accurate dose predictions to be developed for various resettlement and cleanup scenarios on the island and on coral atoll environments, in general.

Applying a mean effective cesium half-life of 8. The effective dose equivalent is usually expressed in units of millirem mrem. The international scientific unit for dose equivalent is the joule per kilogram J kg -1 and is called the sievert Sv. One Sv is the same as rem. With this understanding and the fact that exposure conditions on Bikini are improving at an accelerated rate, early resettlement of Bikini Atoll may become much more plausible and cost effective.

A large plate lysimeter being inserted into the soil on Bikini Island. Lysimeter studies are providing information on the rate of removal of cesium from the soils by the action of rainfall. Marshall Islands Science Foundation Program. Whole-body Counting Chair Interactive. Cactus Crater Interactive 3D. Cactus Crater Containment Visual Description. Report on the Status of the Runit Dome.

Runit Dome Visual Survey People and Events on Bikini Atoll. Environmental Characterization of Bikini Atoll.