In 1958, the United States detonated an 18-kiloton nuclear device known as the “Cactus” test on Runit Island in the Marshall Islands. It left behind a crater that would later become one of the Pacific’s most unsettling landmarks. Some decades later, that crater was filled with more than 120,000 tons of radioactive debris and sealed under a concrete cap. Today, the whole nuclear pile is collectively known as the Runit Dome.
The temporary fix was never revisited. The dome that was built between 1977 and 1980 is starting to fracture, leading some to worry about the nuclear materials lying beneath it.
The dome sits atop a porous coral ground with no protective lining underneath it. Groundwater can freely move in and out. Science Alert found a 6-year-old report on it, in which marine radioactivity expert Ken Buesseler said that radioactive leakage was relatively small but could increase in the future, depending on sea-level rise and storm activity.
The U.S. Covered A Bunch Of Nuclear Waste Material In Cement. Now It’s Cracking.
Now, a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation appears to have confirmed Buesseler’s fears. They documented visible cracks in the dome and elevated radiation levels in surrounding soil, with independent researchers finding the presence of plutonium-239, a dangerous substance that can remain hazardous for over 24,000 years. Nearby communities rely on the lagoon for food, making any spread of radioactive contamination potentially devastating for their food supplies.
A 2024 assessment by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory added even more credence to those concerns as it identified storm surges and rising seas as the greatest threats to the dome’s stability. The island it sits on is only two meters above sea level. With projections suggesting that the Marshall Islands could see up to one meter of sea-level rise by 2100, catastrophe could be on the horizon.
The dome was never designed to last forever, yet human action suggests it has. If something isn’t done soon, the human-induced climate change problems of the future may meet our nuclear fears of the past to create a whole new problem that we are currently unprepared to solve.
The post The Massive Radioactive Tomb in the Pacific Ocean Is Leaking. What Happens Now? appeared first on VICE.
