Só nos resta esperar que, em algum momento, a força das palavras tenha mais poder que as armas, e que a militarização do planeta, seja por qual for o motivo, trás consequências terríveis para toda a humanidade.
Aqui uma reportagem na íntegra, sobrre os resíduos atômicos depositados em ilhas paradisíacas, pelo jornal The Guardian:
This
dome in the Pacific houses tons of radioactive waste – and it's leaking
The Runit Dome
in the Marshall Islands is a hulking legacy of years of US nuclear testing. Now
locals and scientists are warning that rising sea levels caused by climate
change could cause 111,000 cubic yards of debris to spill in
The
radioactive dome on Enewetak atoll.
Coleen Jose, Kim Wall and Jan Hendrik
Hinzel on Runit Island
Friday 3 July
2015 11.00 BSTLast modified on Saturday 4 July 201500.07 BST
Black seabirds
circle high above the giant concrete dome that rises from a tangle of green
vines just a few paces from the lapping waves of the Pacific. Half buried in
the sand, the vast structure looks like a downed UFO.
At the
summit, figures carved into the weathered concrete state only the year of
construction: 1979. Officially, this vast structure is known as the Runit Dome.
Locals call it The Tomb.
Below the
18-inch concrete cap rests the United States’ cold war legacy to this remote
corner of the Pacific Ocean: 111,000 cubic yards of radioactive debris left
behind after 12 years of nuclear tests.
Brackish
water pools around the edge of the dome, where sections of concrete have
started to crack away. Underground, radioactive waste has already started to
leach out of the crater: according to a 2013 report by the US Department of
Energy, soil around the dome is already more contaminated than its contents.
Now locals,
scientists and environmental activists fear that a storm surge, typhoon or
other cataclysmic event brought on by climate change could tear the concrete
mantel wide open, releasing its contents into the Pacific Ocean.
“Runit Dome
represents a tragic confluence of nuclear testing and climate change,” said
Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at
Columbia University, who visited the dome in 2010.
“It resulted
from US nuclear testing and the leaving behind of large quantities of
plutonium,” he said. “Now it has been gradually submerged as result of sea
level rise from greenhouse gas emissions by industrial countries led by the
United States.”
Enewetak
Atoll, and the much better-known Bikini Atoll, were the main sites of the
United States Pacific Proving Grounds, the setting for dozens of atomic
explosions during the early years of the cold war.
The remote
islands – roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii – were deemed
sufficiently distant from major population centres and shipping lanes, and in
1948, the local population of Micronesian fishermen and subsistence farmers
were evacuated to another atoll 200 km away.
In total, 67
nuclear and atmospheric bombs were detonated on Enewetak and Bikini between
1946 and 1958 – an explosive yield equivalent to 1.6 Hiroshima bombs detonated
every day over the course of 12 years.
The
detonations blanketed the islands with irradiated debris, including
Plutonium-239, the fissile isotope used in nuclear warheads, which has a
half-life of 24,000 years.
Detonation
of the nuclear device during Operation Ivy in the Marshall Islands in 1951.
Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
When the
testing came to an end, the US Defence Nuclear Agency (DNA – later the DoE)
carried out an eight-year cleanup, but Congress refused to fund a comprehensive
decontamination programme to make the entire atoll fit for human settlement
again.
The DNA’s
preferred option – deep ocean dumping – was prohibited by international
treaties and hazardous waste regulations, and there was little appetite for
transporting the irradiated refuse back to the US.
In the end,
US servicemen simply scraped off the islands’ contaminated topsoil and mixed it
with radioactive debris. The resulting radioactive slurry was then dumped in an
unlined 350-foot crater on Runit Island’s northern tip, and sealed under 358
concrete panels.
But the dome
was never meant to last. According to the World Health Organization, the $218m
plan was designed as temporary fix: a way to store contaminated material until
a permanent decontamination plan was devised.
Meanwhile,
only three of the atoll’s 40 islands were cleaned up, but not Enjebi, where
half of Enewetak’s population had traditionally lived. And as costs spiralled,
resettlement efforts of the northern part of the atoll stalled indefinitely.
Nevertheless,
in 1980, as the Americans prepared their own departure, the dri-Enewetak
(“people of Enewetak”) were allowed to return to the atoll after 33 years.
Three years
later, the Marshall Islands signed a compact of
free association with the US, granting its people certain privileges, but not
full citizenship.
The deal also
settled of “all claims, past, present and future” related to the US Nuclear
Testing Program – and left the Runit Dome under the responsibility of the
Marshallese government.
Today, the US
government insists that it has honoured all its obligations, and that the
jurisdiction for the dome and its toxic contents lies with the Marshall Islands.
The
Marshallese, meanwhile, say that a country with a population of 53,000 people
and a GDP of $190m – most of it from US aid programs – is simply incapable of
dealing with the potential radioactive catastrophe left behind by the
Americans.
Bravo
Crater at Bikini Atoll, site of the 1954 hydrogen explosion where the island of
Nam was destroyed. Photograph: Alamy
“It’s clear
as day that the local government will neither have the expertise or funds to
fix the problem if it needs a particular fix,” said Riyad Mucadam, climate
adviser to the office of the Marshallese president.
Today, Runit
– the setting for JG Ballard’s short story Terminal Beach – is still uninhabited,
but it receives regular stream of visitors heading from neighboring islands to
its abundant fishing grounds or searching for scrap metal to salvage.
Approaching
the island by boat across from the vast, shallow lagoon – the world’s second
largest – the concrete structure is barely visible among the scrubby trees.
Three decades
after the Americans’ departure, abandoned bunkers dot the shoreline, and
electric cables encased in black rubber snake across the sand.
Nowhere on
the beaches or the dome itself is there a warning to stay away – or even an
indication of radioactivity.
Enewetak’s
senator Jack Ading, who lives in Majuro 600 miles away, doesn’t believe his
home atoll is safe: resettlement efforts in Rongelap and Bikini atolls, also
affected by testing, had to be aborted in the 1970s due to lingering
contamination, despite safety assurances by the US.
“Just close
it off,” said Ading, who has called for armed guards to be stationed on the
site – or at the very least the construction of a fence.
“If they |the
US government] can spend billions of dollars on wars like Iraq, I’m sure they
can spend $10,000 for a fence. It’s a small island. Make it permanent for
people not to visit Runit Dome and the surrounding area, ever.”
Locals say
they know there is “poison” on the island – there is no Marshallese word for
contamination – but say that Runit offers one of the few sources of income on
the impoverished atol.
The US has
yet to fully compensate the dri-Enewetak for the irreversible damage to their
homeland, a total amounting to roughly $244m as appraised by the Nuclear Claims
Tribunal, which was established by the US Congress in 1988 to adjudicate claims
for compensation for health effects from the testing.
Traditional
livelihoods were destroyed by the testing: the US Department of Energy bans the
export of fish and copra – dried coconut flesh used for its oil – on the
grounds of lingering contamination.
Nowadays, the
atoll’s growing population survives on a depleted trust fund from the Compact
of Free Association with the US, but payouts come to just $100 per person,
according to locals.
Many locals
are deeply in debt, and dependent on a supplemental food program funded by the
US Department of Agriculture, which delivers shipments of process foods such as
Spam, flour and canned goods. The destruction a centuries-old lifestyle have
lead to both a diabetes epidemic and regular bouts of starvation on the island.
The
Lady E, a vessel that transports supplemental food from the capital to
Enewetak, now hosts people who migrate in and out of the atoll. Photograph:
Coleen Jose/Coleen Jose
Those who can
afford it have taken advantage of the Compact’s visaless travel benefits and
migrated to Hawaii.
“Enewetak has
no money. What will people do to make money?” asked Rosemary Amitok, who lives
with her husband Hemy on the atoll’s largest island.
The couple
eke out a living by scavenging for scrap copper on Runit and other islands on
the atoll. For weeks at a time, they camp out in a makeshift tent on the island
while Hemy digs for cables and other metal debris.
The sell the
salvage for a dollar or two per pound to a Chinese merchant who runs Enewetak’s
only store and exports the metal, along with sea shells and sea cucumbers to
Fujian in China.
Other – and
more worrying – traces of Enewetak’s history have also reached China: according
to a 2014 study published in Environmental
Science & Technology, plutonium isotopes from the nuclear tests have been
found as far a the Pearl River Estuary in Guangdong province.
Many people
in Enewetak fear that one day the dome will break open, further spreading
highly radioactive debris.
As
catastrophic weather events become more frequent, recent studies – including2013 study of the Runit Dome’s
structural integrity carried out by the DoE – have warned that typhoons could
destroy or damage the cement panels, or inundate the island.
A 2013 report commissioned by the
US Department of Energy to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
acknowledged that radioactive materials are already leaching out of the dome,
but downplays the possibility of serious environmental damage or health risks.
“The waste
within the dome is at least contained. There aren’t too many concerns for the
Runit Dome to pose a threat to local people,” said Terry Hamilton, the
scientific director for the Marshall Islands Program of the DoE-commissioned
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Hamilton said
that cracks in the concrete were merely the result of long-term drying and
shrinkage, but said the DoE was planning to carry out cosmetic repairs in order
to restore public confidence.
The DoE
insists Enewetak is safe for human settlement today, and says it monitors local
residents, groundwater, crops and marine life for radiation. Separate checkups
are carried out on those suspected of digging for scrap metal.
Though
Enewetak is not allowed to sell its copra and fish, Hamilton insists the
produce would satisfy safety standards on the international market.
But locals
complain that basic information – including results of their own tests for
exposure to plutonium – is not readily accessible to them.
Independent
scientists say that salvaging Runit’s scrap metal may expose locals to much
higher risks.
“Those guys
are digging in the dirt breathing in stuff in hot spots. That has to be
hundreds of thousands times higher doses of potential health effects than
swimming,” said Ken Buessler, a senior scientist and marine chemist at the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who visited Runit and gathered samples of
sediment in the lagoon earlier this year.
Navy
clean-up crews swab the deck of the Prinz Eugen in an attempt to reduce
radiation levels after the July 1946 nuclear test blast at Bikini Atoll.
Photograph: AP
In 2012,
Barack Obama signed legislation directing the DoE to
monitor the groundwater beneath the dome, conduct a visual study of its
exterior and submit reports determining whether contamination in the dome poses
a health risk to the dri-Enewetak.
In an emailed
response to questions, US ambassador to the Marshall Islands Thomas Armbruster
said that a recent meeting between the US, the DoE and the Marshall Islands
government was “one of the best ever”.
The minister
himself remembers that encounter differently.
Tony De Brum
was nine years old and living on the atoll of Likiep, when he witnessed the
blinding flash, thunderous roar and blood-red skies of Castle Bravo, the most
powerful hydrogen bomb ever detonated by the US, which was tested at Bikini
Atoll on 1 March 1954.
Now the
Marshall Islands minister of foreign affairs, he has since emerged as a voice
for small island nations in international climate negotiations and leading
advocate on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. De Brum is spearheading
an ambitious lawsuit against the world’s nuclear powers, including the US, at
the International Court of Justice.
“We asked the
Americans, are you going to put a sign on the dome that says ‘Don’t come here
because you might get exposed’?” he said.
“Our
president asked: ‘Are you going to put a sign up so that the birds and turtles
also understand?’”
The US has
never formally apologized to the Marshall Islands for turning it into an atomic
testing ground. When the UN special rapporteur on human rights and toxic waste,
Calin Georgescu, visited the Marshall Islands in 2012 he criticized the US,
remarking that the islanders feel like ‘nomads’ in their own country. Nuclear
testing, he said, “left a legacy of distrust in the hearts and minds of the
Marshallese”.
“Why
Enewetak?” asked Ading, Enewetak’s exiled senator during an interview in the
nation’s capital. “Every day, I have that same question. Why not go to some
other atoll in the world? Or why not do it in Nevada, their backyard? I know
why. Because they don’t want the burden of having nuclear waste in their
backyard. They want the nuclear waste hundreds of thousands miles away. That’s
why they picked the Marshall Islands.”
“The least
they could’ve done is correct their mistakes.”
Aqui temos um mapa sobre testes Nucleares, publicado no jornal The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/aug/14/nuclear-weapon-detonation-hiroshima-nagasaki-trinity-1945-world-map-video
Não custa sonhar, quem sabe desta grande nação norte americana, surja um líder semelhante a Mahathima Ghandi.
