Ariana Tibon was attending the University of Hawaiʻi in 2017 when she came across a captivating photo on the internet: a black-and-white image of a man holding a baby. The caption read: “Nelson Anjain getting his baby monitored on March 2, 1954, by an AEC RadSafe team member on Rongelap two days after ʻBravo.’” Tibon’s great-grandfather, Nelson Anjain, was pictured in the photo. He resided on Rongelap in the Marshall Islands at the time when the U.S. conducted Castle Bravo, the most significant of 67 nuclear weapon tests performed there during the Cold War. This resulted in the displacement and illness of Indigenous communities, contamination of fish, disruption of traditional food practices, and the development of cancers and other adverse health effects that still persist to this day.
Last month, a federal report by the Government Accountability Office analyzed the remaining nuclear contamination not only in the Pacific but also in Greenland and Spain. The conclusive findings suggest that climate change could disturb nuclear waste left in Greenland and the Marshall Islands. Rising sea levels could potentially disseminate contamination in the RMI while conflicting risk assessments have caused residents to distrust radiological information from the U.S. Department of Energy.
In Greenland, chemical pollution and radioactive liquid waste are entombed in ice sheets from a nuclear power plant on a U.S. military research base. The report raises concerns about the migration of nuclear contamination in the Pacific and Greenland and the potential health risks for nearby residents. With frozen waste possibly being exposed by 2100, environmental and human health impacts are a growing concern.
The GAO study highlights disagreements between Marshall Islands officials and the U.S. Department of Energy, emphasizing the need for better communication strategies to convey pollution risks to the Marshallese people. The U.S. government maintains that the Republic of the Marshall Islands is responsible for its lands and liabilities arising from U.S. nuclear testing.
Although the Biden administration has agreed to fund a new museum commemorating those impacted by nuclear testing and supporting climate change initiatives in the Marshall Islands, securing Congressional support for these initiatives remains challenging. These efforts are part of ongoing treaty obligations with the Marshall Islands, as well as broader national security objectives to strengthen alliances in the Pacific region.
