Subcommittee Hearing: Runit Dome and the U.S Nuclear Legacy in the Marshall Islands
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Date: Thursday, October 21, 2021
Time: 10:00 AM
Presiding: The Honorable Katie Porter, Chair
On Thursday, October 21, 2021, at 10:00 a.m. EDT, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (O&I) will host a fully remote hearing titled, Runit Dome and the U.S Nuclear Legacy in the Marshall Islands.
The hearing will take place on Cisco WebEx platform and will be livestreamed on the Committee’s YouTube page.
For hearing materials and schedules, please visit U.S. House of Representatives, Committee Repository at http://docs.house.gov/.
i was in the marshal islands in 58 was told nothing about radiation lied to us about the radiation badges we wore
Sitting here attempting to think of how to start, where to begin, it is a semi long story or could be. I am a survivor of the Enewetak Atoll Radiation clean-up project. I supervised the reef demolition and quarry operations along with minor road maintenance. I was never briefed on the hazards we were to face. I have never been de-briefed at the end of the mission. My safety equipment amounted to a boony hat and jungle boots, shorts and t-shirt. For a couple of weeks at the beginning of my tour I wore a dosimeter and rad badge. When they were to be replaced, I was told they could not handle the heat as the readings were incorrect. I lived on Lojwa in a temporary building on a concrete pad made out of contaminated (radiation) materials. By the way, you cannot clean radiation from sand, from coral! The island we worked on called Runit had a hot end (contaminated) and a cold end (it was safe??). We blew up reef and hauled the broken up coral to the rock crusher to be used on the construction of the dome. The crusher produced dust (contaminated/radiation materials) which was stockpiled and then loaded into dump trucks (all of which produced dust!! radiation contaminated dust!!). These dump trucks were on the safe end of Runit and drove to the hot end bouncing all the way throwing radiation particles into the air for us to breathe. After the dump trucks cleared the Air Forces hot/cold line they went to the batch plant and unloaded the coral rock. They then returned to the clean end of the island bouncing all the way and throwing up – you guessed it – contaminated/radioactive materials. So on a daily basis we inhaled huge quantities (minute in scientists minds) of dust, containing plutonium 238/239/240 which has a half life of 240,000 years.
It is my understanding that 238 goes into bones and hides until ready to kill, a time it decides on. As I read all the materials that have been released from the military, I noticed many letters from Generals and scientists stating we were not advised of the harm we would receive from our project. There are also letters and the such saying that the effects of radiation would be more than originally thought. It is amazing that all the smart people could not figure out that the bottomless crater would allow the contaminated radioactive materials to seep/leak into the lagoon and also into the Pacific Ocean. Of course all the leftover contaminated equipment was dumped into the lagoon (so it can seep into the Pacific Ocean). Who were the smart people who came up with these great ideas? We had the AEC, DOD, DOE, DNA, DOA, DOAF, DON all screwing this up and just over 4300 military personnel are/or have paid the ultimate price for the egotistical stupidity of the aforementioned. We lost another survivor this month to radiation produced cancers and have many more in need of medical assistance.