Here’s one they Surely Overlooked: That climate change could unearth Cold War nuke Debris.
This website doesn’t have an Eeeek! category, but if it did, this would surely fit — that the effects of global warming threaten to unearth U.S. nuclear waste buried in a couple of former testing sites..
Yup, a recently released U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says that noxious nuke stuff dumped in Greenland and the Pacific Ocean’s Marshall Islands could be disturbed — and thus released — by the effects of climate change.
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In Greenland, radioactive liquids left over from a nuclear power plant on a Cold War era U.S. military research base called Camp Century could be exposed by 2100 if Artic melting continues at the current rapid pace, the study says. In addition — and perhaps more likely — the authors noted that chemical wastes, such as carcinogenic PCBs, are also in danger of being released.
Meanwhile, in the Marshall Islands, which lie about halfway between Hawaii and Australia and contain the famed Bikini Atoll and Enewetak Atoll nuclear test sites, locals are concerned that rising waters could disturb the capped remains of Cold War experiments, including full-blown, above-ground bomb tests.
“In the Marshall Islands — where the U.S. tested nuclear weapons — local officials are worried that rising sea levels may impact contaminated sites,” said the GAO report while also noting that the resulting radioactive fallout “remains measurable on several atolls, some of which are still uninhabitable.” The agency also said that local officials — the once-American-owned islands became independent in 1979 — are concerned “climate change could mobilize radiological contamination, posing risks to fresh water and food sources.”
Adding to the ire of islanders is that the U.S. has pretty much washed its hands of the potential problems, saying that the islands agreed to take responsibility at independence and after reparations for the nuclear tests. In addition, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has said that human health risks are low despite the islanders’ concerns. “This and other disagreements fuel distrust of DOE’s information,’’ added the GAO’s report.
We can see another explosion brewing.
