Marshalls nuclear test damage

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@aecl.ca>]

FYI :

http://www.pim.com.fj/99_12/december.html#Anchor - 11111
Marshalls nuclear test damage lingers
By Giff Johnson 
IT'S more than 41 years since the last mushroom cloud rose into the sky
above Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the Marshall Islands. Despite the lapse
of time, health problems arising from exposure to the 67 United States tests
continue and the long-term prognosis for future generations is unknown.  The
troubling aspect of the Marshalls' nuclear test picture is that: In contrast
to similarly exposed populations in the US (for example, the "Downwinders"
in the Nevada and Utah area), Marshall Islanders have not received full
compensation payments because of the limited amount of funding. To date,
about one-third of all islanders receiving compensation have already died
without receiving their total compensation.  While the US has approved more
than $200 billion for its superfund cleanup sites in the United States, it
argues over tens of millions of dollars for cleanups at nuclear test sites
and nearby atolls in the Marshalls; for Bikini, Enewetak and Rongelap -
where cleanup funds have been provided - the funds are specifically intended
to cleanup and rehabilitate only certain islands in these necklaces of coral
islands, a concept that one islander described as like telling someone to
eat an apple, half of which is rotten.  Many more islanders than previously
admitted by US officials were, in fact, exposed to nuclear test fallout from
many of the hydrogen bomb blasts of the 1950s. There are some positive
developments that, while not balancing out the scale, at least offer a
reason for optimism. Beginning in January this year, the medical program for
two of the atolls affected by fallout changed hands, moving from a US
nuclear laboratory in New York to a private Hawaii-based consortium of
medical doctors. 
For 44 years, the medical program for Rongelap and Utrik had been run by
Brookhaven National Laboratory - without any kind of peer review or
oversight. 
The program had been criticised repeatedly and, from its beginnings in 1954
through the early 1980s, justifiably as research rather than treatment
oriented. 
After several years of lobbying by Marshall Islands officials, the US
Department of Energy agreed to competitively bid the contract and the result
is that a new contractor independent of the US government, Pacific Health
Research Institute of Honolulu, is now running the program. The Department
of Energy (DOE) has, since 1994, turned over to the Marshall Islands more
than one million pages of classified nuclear test reports and data,
providing the Marshalls with a much clearer picture of the exposure problem.

It is a paradox of history that it is many of these formerly top secret US
documents that have demonstrated how US officials deceived and withheld from
Marshall Islands negotiators key documentation that would have changed the
outcome of the nuclear test compensation package that was signed in the
mid-1980s. 
Instead, the US maintained the fiction of "four atolls" (Bikini, Enewetak,
Rongelap and Utrik) exposed to nuclear testing, a myth that, sadly,
continues to this day, despite the release of reports showing many more
islands and populations were exposed to varying levels of fallout.
<><><><><><><><>
...the printed version of this article also mentions the Marshalls' Gov't's
intentions to adopt US EPA's remediation standard of 15 mrem, rather than
the 100 mrem annual dose limit -- which would make the Rongelap, Bikini,
etc. clean-ups far more expensive, if not physically impossible. But they
have one valid point: if spending untold billions is OK for DoE sites in
continental US, why wouldn't it be OK for the Marshalls ? ....good question
for EPA officials, isn't it ? 

http://www.pim.com.fj/99_03/mar.html#Anchor-55279
Bikinians resettled on wrong island: US official 
By Giff Johnson
RESETTLEMENT of Bikini Islanders in the mid-1970s on the former nuclear test
site failed because US officials returned the people to a heavily
contaminated island, not the one selected by scientists as safe for
rehabitation, a former US Atomic Energy Commission official said recently. 
Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) scientists had recommended resettling Eneu
Island - not Bikini Island - because it had radiation levels one-tenth of
those on nearby Bikini Island, said Tommy F. McCraw, who worked for 25 years
with the Division of Operational Safety and the Office of Health and
Environmental Research for the AEC and its successor organizations. 
McCraw's comments - the first by an AEC official confirming the bureaucratic
and scientific ineptitude that caused the first resettlement to be aborted
in 1978 - were published in a recent issue of the scientific magazine,
Health Physics.
A Bikini official expressed little surprise at the report, which was carried
in a front page news article in the Marshall Islands Journal in late
January. The Bikinians have to deal with a multitude of US federal agencies
and getting timely or responsive action has often proved elusive, he said.
After six years on Bikini Island, more than 100 Bikinians were evacuated in
a widely publicised event in 1978 after their radiation exposures had
reached or exceeded US federal radiation protection standards. Islanders
have not returned since except for short visits and recently launched a
cleanup program to rehabilitate the atoll, which has 23 islands in a
horseshoe shape necklace. Bikini was the testing ground for 23 US nuclear
weapons between 1946 and 1958. Most of the Bikini population lives in exile
on Kili, an island about 400 miles to the south of Bikini.

http://www.pim.com.fj/98_11/nov.html#marshall
Marshall Islands seeks compensation increase 
By Giff Johnson
THE Marshall Islands is preparing to launch a formal appeal to the US
Congress to dramatically increase compensation payments and medical coverage
for islanders affected by American nuclear testing from 1946-1958. Several
developments are building momentum for the Marshall Islands case to the US: 
*The apparent unfairness of the Marshalls compensation program when compared
to a similar U.S. Congressionally-approved settlement for Americans living
downwind of the Nevada nuclear test site. Although U.S. tests in the
Marshalls were 100 times the nuclear yield of the small bombs tested in
Nevada, the American "downwinders" are receiving a larger amount of
compensation than a Nuclear Claims Tribunal established with U.S. funding
for compensating islanders for similar personal injury and land damages.
* Marshall Islanders suffering radiation-related health problems are not
getting full compensation. One third of all Marshallese nuclear claimants
have died without receiving 100 percent of their awards because the Nuclear
Claims Tribunal's compensation fund is limited to $45 million, and the
number of claims has pushed awards over $66 million.

http://www.pim.com.fj/98_07/july.html#black
Nuclear test sites declared safe! 
By Giff Johnson 
FOR the first time in 13 years, there is a glimmer of hope that exiled
Rongelap Islanders will be able to return home in the future. 
A US-funded first phase nuclear cleanup and rehabilitation effort kicks off
in August and will take about two years. With the completion of the initial
$8 million project, Rongelap will have the basic infrastructure - a base
camp for workers, new dock, an improved airstrip, power plant and water
makers - to support the cleanup of the main island and, if funding is
available, the possible extension of the cleanup to Rongelap's more than 50
other islands. 
Twenty-five years of scientific research by American scientist William
Robison at Bikini and Enewetak is underpinning the hopes of a return home
for Bikinians and Rongelapese. 
Other islanders, living on three southern islands in Enewetak's circular
atoll necklace, are eyeing a cleanup and return of their nearby, but
contaminated, northern islands. 
However even as Robison, funded by the US Department of Energy, says these
atolls are either safe or can become safe with cleanup action, he adds that
it is the islanders will have to make their own value judgements about
safety levels and methods to use for cleaning up the islands. 
For starters, all the islands are employing their own independent scientists
to review the US data and analysis. The Bikinians, who broke ground in 1997
to officially kick off their cleanup, are moving cautiously, attempting to
get clear assurances from the US government about Bikini's safety. 



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