You do not grow crops, you do not eat coconut, you do not drink the water: Stephen Palumbi, marine scientist
The film Oppenheimer has shone a spotlight on the dawn of US nuclear weapons tests. In the Marshall Islands, where 23 of those earth-shattering blasts happened, people have never been able to forget
t first glance, the aquamarine waters that surround the Marshall Islands seem like paradise. But this idyllic Pacific scene hides a dark secret: it was the location of 67 nuclear detonations as part of US military tests during the cold war between 1946 and 1958.
The Seminole nuclear blast on Enewetak Atoll in 1956, part of the Operation Redwing series of US thermonuclear bomb tests. Photograph: Corbis/Getty
The bombs were exploded above ground and underwater on Bikini and Enewetak Atolls, including one device 1,100 times larger than the Hiroshima atom bomb. Chernobyl-like levels of radiation forced hundreds from their homes. Bikini Atoll remains deserted. At the US government’s urging, residents have begun returning slowly to Enewetak.
Today, there is little visible evidence of the tests on the islands except for a 115-metre (377ft)-wide cement dome that locals nickname the Tomb – for good reason.
Built in the late 1970s and now aged and cracking, the huge concrete lid on Runit Island covers more than 90,000 cubic metres (3.1m cubic ft) – or roughly 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools – of radioactive soil and nuclear waste. Unbeknown to the Marshallese people, the US shipped the waste from Nevada, where it was testing nuclear weapons on Native American land….
After the truth-shower 