[somishere]

The Marshall Islands tests were carried out after the end of WWII.

It's worth considering that the US also used the islands as a dumping ground for waste from previous tests in the US [1] ... At a site which is now under threat of leaking due to the effects of climate change [2]

[1] https://www.latimes.com/projects/marshall-islands-nuclear-te...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Island

[fc417fc802]

You really can't make this up. We have geological formations within our territory that are both incredibly stable as well as located within a dry climate. Yet we choose to use one of the least stable locations in terms of both geology, surrounding environment, and weather available to us.

I think the only way you could top this would be to place a vault at ground level that spanned the San Andreas fault.

[BigGreenJorts]

> We have geological formations within our territory that are both incredibly stable as well as located within a dry climate.

Even more comical is that it's not like we didn't think of that because we literally do use that space for those reasons. We just also decided to fill the atoll with large amounts of nuclear waste... Seemingly for fun. To give the benefit of the doubt, for transportation logistics reasons.

[ks1723]

From the second wiki article:

“… the soil and the lagoon water surrounding the structure now contain a higher level of radioactivity than the debris of the dome itself, so even in the event of a total collapse, the radiation dose delivered to the local resident population or marine environment should not change significantly.”

This is just insane.

[concordDance]

Why would leaking matter? The ocean will dilute the leakage to irrelevance (recall that there's 4 billion tons of Uranium already in the ocean).

[fc417fc802]

It's a reasonable question. I think the linked wiki article addresses it though. There are at least concerns about ground water contamination and about heavy metals.

If dilution is so straightforward then why wasn't the waste mixed with a large volume of sea water and then dumped far out at sea to begin with? That probably would have been cheaper.

[hulitu]

> Why would leaking matter?

Go and see for yourself. /s