This Concrete Dome Holds A Leaking Toxic Timebomb | Foreign Correspondent

my whole vision in life was to live on a deserted tropical South Pacific island what's not what you tell the Lord America tried to bury its toxic legacy here on a remote coral atoll they covered it over with an 18 inch thick dome and left now the sea is rising and the dome is leaking and the men who tried to clean it up a dying I think it's a total secret we didn't even know the guys didn't know we were lied to tonight we journey to one of the most contaminated places on earth and we meet the people fighting back you know if you accept that you doomed then what is left to fight for you know where are you gonna find hope we need the world to help us whatever the world is doing please look at us [Music] we're halfway between Australia and Hawaii in the middle of a seemingly endless Pacific Ocean below us chains of mostly uninhabited islands that together form the nation of the Marshall Islands [Applause] monsterhug a place when you'll eat twice as many tests were carried out some spread over two million square kilometers of the Central Pacific the Marshall Islands is a scattering of more than a thousand islands and islets few people have heard of in a we talk but it's the ground zero of us nuclear testing in the Pacific the welcome sign hints at what we've come to see but when you know what it really is few would want to visit this place the sat whole is a ring of 40 islands so remote that there's no regular transport in or out it'll be a week before our plane returns if we're lucky it's a stunning place but its beauty hides a dark dirty secret [Music] [Applause] this is a place whose atomic past is seared into its present the people of Enewetak were forced into exile by the atomic fallout allowed to return after three decades a new generation is learning about the traditions and customs of this place they have also been taught about America's toxic legacy and how it lies under a giant dome they understand so more they understand that we have a poison or in our island that is what they call poison they know that there is a doom because they have been there so the dome you call up the tomb [Music] we set out the next morning to see for ourselves to do that we need guides who know how to navigate the reefs and the world war ii wrecks that lie in enna we talk shallows to get to where we're going we have to cross the world's second largest ocean lagoon formed by the rim of an ancient volcano it's a thousand square kilometres of the Pacific after nearly two hours we approached one of Enewetak atolls 40 islands a tiny scrubby rise called Runet what we've come to say is hard to spot from the beach only from the air can you get a true sense of the size and the scale of what the United States military calls the dome the dome is actually a dump it contains the toxic leftovers of some of the most powerful atomic bombs in history America's cold war legacy it is a tomb of nuclear waste the dome is completely unlabeled there's no fence there are no guards there people can go there if they want and there's nobody to stop them like other former nuclear test sites in the Marshall Islands runa Thailand is officially off-limits but there's no one here to stop us when we visit this place is just too isolated to guard [Music] from 1946 to 1958 the United States detonated dozens of atomic bombs in the Marshall Islands [Music] and while in a wheat Hawk is hardly known its closest neighbor 300 kilometres to the east became synonymous with nuclear fallout it's name is bikini bikini island over three miles from the point of birch on the water you can see the shock wave coming forth again [Music] I'll from the Kioto right now I don't think I'll be able to go back community's just not clean enough for us it's not safe one of the country's last traditional navigators else and Kellan is adrift living in exile because he's not allowed to return home to bikini ahead of the atomic testing there in the 1940s the United States told Allison Kellen's family and the 167 people of his at all that they had a duty to the world to leave their Islands it was a moment filmed by the military's PR unit scene 26 take two all right now James will you tell them that the United States government now wants to turn this great discussive force into something good for mankind and that this experiments here at the Keeney are the first step in that direction very good are they willing to go and everything will go well you tell them and King Judah that everything being in God's hands it cannot be other than good [Applause] and here by the way you hear them singing it their marshalese version of you are my sunshine [Music] the Islanders are a nomadic group and are well pleased that the Yanks are going to add a little variety to their life Elson Kellen's 93 year old aunt was one of those who was put on a boat and taken off her island seven decades later the pain of forced exile is not eased if we did she says when are we going back and I keep saying uh one day I don't know when but one day but I know I know for a fact that we're not going back so it really really made me sad because I don't know what to tell her should I lie to her Emily it's not her fault but I don't want to lie to her hundreds of marshalese was shifted off their islands by the United States some like them way LaVon after it was too late in March 1954 her Island was enveloped in the fallout from one of the bikini blasts codenamed Castle Bravo it was the biggest nuclear test ever carried out by the United States a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb the earth soup you know and when we saw the breath that I in in the loud song most of us were clearly brave we just sit down and see what will happen next a few hours later 14-year old LEM way-o noticed white powder falling from the sky some of the kids they even know what's noise so they named these the first time whizzes Saudis yeah the snow was highly radioactive fallout from the castle Bravo bomb it took days for the Americans to evacuate them the survivors remain nuclear refugees to this day the meteorologists had predicted a wind condition which should have carried the fallout to the north of the group of small atolls lying to the east of bikini the wind failed to follow the predictions but shifted south of that line and the little islands of Ron Gillette bronzed Erick and you Turek were in the edge of the path of the fallout the medical staff on Kwajalein have advised us that they anticipate no illness barring of course diseases which may be hereafter contracted Jack Natan Thor here in the Marshall Islands Capital Majuro more than 30 years ago and never left now the head of the country's Red Cross he has spent decades fighting for nuclear justice for the people of Bikini Atoll even taking their fight for compensation to Washington as children you don't open up your your history books and see a word about bikini and the nuclear testing out here even though in my belief the Cold War were literally fought and won on the shores of bikini I mean there were 23 weapons tested up there 20 of them were hydrogen bombs I mean the people of bikini did do a lot for mankind I mean even now these days you have the North Korean leader talking about exploding a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific like it's nothing the idea that they're even playing around with words and and notions like that is so insulting and so infuriating to the people who live out here and have been through this and have suffered for since the 40s and 50s it's it's really awful for us to hear that scientist turned the experiment and entire success a success in destruction as the smoke rises on any we talk the curtain rises on the seeds of man's oblivion the impacts of 12 years of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands included increased rates of thyroid and other cancers and the permanent exile of people from their home islands in 1986 as part of a deal to give the Marshall Islands independence the u. s. paid 150 million dollars later an independent tribunal awarded more than two billion dollars to victims of the testing program less than four million was ever paid the Tribunal office in the capital Majuro is no longer operating with most claims unresolved sitting in files gathering dust [Music] the US government policy on the nuclear weapons legacy in the Marshall Islands is to simply downgrade and dismiss health hazards as non-existent or insignificant giff Johnson is the publisher of the Marshall Islands journal the country's only newspaper for three decades he's been a passionate advocate for the local people his wife Darlene Kay Joo was a famous nuclear survivor and marshalese leader who died of cancer aged just 45 it really makes us wonder if Marshall Islanders will ever get justice from the nuclear weapons tests that were conducted here and justice is the right word it's really important to understand that that a lot of nuclear contaminated material was tossed into a crater left over from a bomb test a coral atoll essentially and a coral ad told by its nature is porous when the US was getting ready to clean up and leave and leave 1970s they picked the pit that had been left by one of the smaller atomic explosions and dumped a lot of this plutonium and other radioactive waste into the pit and covered it over with an 18 inch thick dome and left that dome lies 1,100 kilometres to the west of the capital Majuro like Bikini Atoll this place is deemed too hot in radioactive terms for human habitation people in the United States would not tolerate something like this in their own backyard right now or anytime that's why it's up there it's astounding that it is there when you go out there it's it's very surreal I mean to me it's like this big monument to America's giant Funko the dome was never meant to be anything but a temporary solution to the problem of atomic waste at almost every stage of its construction safety was sacrificed to save money Michel Gerard is a u.

s. climate change specialist these visited the dome the bottom of the dome is just what was left behind by the nuclear weapons explosion it's permeable soil there was no effort to line it and therefore the seawater is inside the dome already they see sometimes washes over it you know in a large storm and the United States government has acknowledged that a major typhoon could break it apart and caused all of the radiation in it to disperse you can see why rune it's remoteness made it seem like a good place for the dome and its contaminated contents but like most of the islands of the Marshalls Runet is barely a metre above sea level at its highest point when this dome was built in the late 1970s there was no factoring in sea level rises caused by climate change now every day when the tide rolls out as it is now radioactive isotopes from underneath the dome roll out with it that all is the connection between the nuclear age and the climate change age it'll be a very devastation even if it really leaks we're not talking just the Marshall Islands we're talking the whole Pacific Ocean I think it's really telling that that the ocean is rising and it's and it's it's making this nuclear waste leak out because in a lot of ways this climate change issue has also been revived revitalizing a lot of conversations about our nuclear legacy every time someone talks about climate change you can't ignore our nuclear legacy as well it's linked Kathy gentoku Jeana is a poet and climate change activists she's proud of her marshalese heritage it's my home it's where I'm from it's where my family's from my ancestors they've been here for thousands of years and and those there's also just nothing like it anywhere else and it's a part of who I am a rising leader of her nation Kathi general Kitchener was invited to the 2014 United Nations climate change summit in New York to speak about how the Marshall Islands is on the front line in the battle against rising sea levels the Marshall Islands encompasses more than two million square kilometers of ocean I mean it's the United Nations these are world leaders from all over and it was the first time that I was able to share something that I was I cared about you know something about the islands and what she shared was a poem about climate change a poem addressed to her infant daughter you are a seven month old sunrise of gummy smiles you are bald as an egg and bald of the Buddha you are thighs that are thunder shrieks that are lightning so excited for bananas hugs and our morning walks along the lagoon dear matza filipino i want to tell you about that lagoon that lazy lounging lagoon lounging against the sunrise men say that one day that lagoon will devour you they say it will gnaw at the shoreline chew at the roots of your breadfruit trees gulp down rows of sea walls and crunch through your islands shattered bones dear lots of Filipino don't cry mommy promises you no one will come and devour you no one's drowning baby no one's moving no one's losing their homeland no one's gonna become a climate change refugee in a place known for sober speeches and pokerface diplomacy Kathy gentle kitchen has pledged to her daughter to fight climate change moved many to tears I mean when they all stood up I kind of thought they were just being polite but I just found out later that's not that doesn't happen all the time some estimates put the sea-level rise here in excess of 60 centimeters by the end of this century that's enough to inundate three quarters of the country now we're on alert every time there's a high tide because the water will come over and flood our houses you know crash against homes or destroy homes it'll dry the crops and you know that didn't ever happen before you know we're getting a lot of more extreme weathers like droughts too and so it's just gotten a lot worse in the past couple years it will kill a wreath so he kills our wreath a killer sailfish he'll sell food and you know marshall has a very very limited land so there's really nothing for us to survive on so I would you know I would say the very very short time I cannot give you the year but we will gradually probably start moving out soon so the clock is ticking before you realize it is ticking I Drve my grandson to school every day is eight years old and we talk about this stuff it's changing [Music] Jack neaten fall argues that rising seas are a bigger threat to his Island home and to his grandsons future than atomic bombs ever were I'm telling him your life is going to be really hard a lot harder than my life was and the place that you loved is gonna be slowly disappearing and it's gonna be up to people of your generation to fight back on this and he he gets that everywhere is the coast because there's some parts of the island that are so thin that there's ocean on either side of you we're just surrounded by ocean and I don't think the ocean has ever looked as big to me until I came back home after living out in the States now in recent years late winter king tides have swept over some islands choking crops with salt and even wrecking homes the flooding could contaminate the country's shallow freshwater aquifers and sewage filled tides threaten outbreaks of fever and dysentery and according to the locals it's becoming much more frequent we would go years in between seeing big big inundation incidents and since about 2008 it's increased with regularity to the point where I mean we'll have six eight of these in a year not even the dead have been spared here graves have been smashed and washed out to sea in 2014 a state of emergency was declared when 5-meter swells smashed over the shoreline the US Geological Survey warns that many pacific atolls like those in the marshall islands will be uninhabitable within decades [Music] the Marshall Islands are in grave danger there are already a lot of people who are leaving the Marshall Islands quad haven't got a Hawaii or two mainland United States some of them go elsewhere but the long-term future of the Marshall Islands is not bright [Music] I would say that our country is sinking our countries of front-line so we're facing the devastating effect of climate change and we need the world to help us people our bikinis are relocated from their atoms because of nuclear today we're about to get relocated not from our island but from our country so whatever the world is look is doing please look at us for many Marshallese the dome on Runa Thailand remains a potent symbol of the threat of climate change it may be made from half metre thick concrete panels but as we've seen elsewhere the ocean is likely to win out over concrete every time the radiation levels of the people of Enewetak are supposed to be monitored here in this space aged us-built lab on the main island but when we visit the machine for assessing radioactive exposure isn't working the US government prohibits the export of food from enna we talk because of the concerns about contamination fish from here is also banned but this at all surrounds a calm Lagoon and the lure of fresh fish is too much to resist despite the lingering radiation and as we're about to find out it's not just the people of the Marshall Islands who were living with the fallout from what happened here all those years ago this was the site of the largest nuclear cleanup in United States history 4,000 young soldiers toiled here for years to fill in the bomb crater underneath this dome among the more than 80,000 cubic meters of contaminated soil and debris was plutonium one of the most toxic substances on the planet for many of the young soldiers who worked here there was a high price to pay [Music] those young men are now in their 50s and 60s and few in the United States know their story from the islands of petals of the Marshall Islands I've come to the deserts of Nevada another place where the United States tested many of its atomic weapons in fact you could see the mushroom clouds from the Nevada Test Site a hundred kilometres away in Las Vegas and that's where I'm headed today to meet one of n aware tax atomic cleanup veterans the suburban sprawl of Las Vegas feels like another world away from the remote emptiness Savina we talked at all but the dome is something former US soldier Jim and roll can never forget and neither can he forgive I had never even heard of that we talk I never knew that there were 43 nuclear tests up I didn't know I was radioactive they didn't tell us when we landed everybody kind of pretty much flipped out I was told I was going to this is a tropical paradise for the last six months of the service a specialist in the Army's 84th Engineer Battalion G mandrill was one of thousands of US soldiers sent to help clean up in a we talked at all in the 1970s a thousand workers from the US Armed Forces are giving the northern islands a facelift striving to dig and scrape away the radioactive soil and debris this US news story shows soldiers on n a we talk wearing radiation suits but G mandrill says this was just a show for the TV cameras there was no special gear issue we were just issued our normal warm weather gear which would be shorts t-shirts hats and in the jungle Vanessa and will you given radioactive decontamination Trent no no more was there any safety equipment no if people do come back to runa Thailand they'll be risking perhaps the hottest radiation on earth this island won't be fit for human habitation again for at least 24,000 years on Rena Thailand site of the dome soldiers were exposed to one of the most toxic substances known the result of a bomb test gone wrong one of the attempted nuclear weapons explosions didn't work and so the plutonium rather than having a nuclear blast was just broken apart by the conventional explosions leading to a about 400 little chunks of plutonium that were spread all around the ate all those 400 chunks were put in plastic bags and tossed into the crater underneath the dome well there you have us round up walk around and pick up loose pieces for instance and just gather up whatever we could throw it in a pile and I never had any clue that dust could literally get into your lungs but these guys were dealing with that every day all of us work declassified US government documents revealed that Washington knew the troops would be exposed to plutonium on Runet Island this secret cable from 1972 talks about the existence of solid plutonium bearing chunks on the island surface it warmed that the quantity of plutonium was undoubtedly large and that it presented a new and serious concern many of the US soldiers in particular who worked at ANA we talked have since come down with illnesses that they say were caused by their work there Jim and roll is one of those soldiers for years he suffered from a myriad of complaints he says a link to his service on in a we talk he had his gallbladder out shortly after that they found a seven and a half pound tumor cancerous tumor in his abdomen I suffer from roughly 40 to 45 residuals from again sir I've got a view Titus we've got a spot on my liver that they're watching kidneys the problem for former cleanup workers like Jim and roll is it unlike the other u. s.