Cracked Vault Holding Nuclear Waste Could Leak Untold Radiation into the Ocean

Sometimes it really seems like we’re actively trying to bring about sci-fi level visions of apocalyptic end times. Ever hear of “the Tomb,” a cement bunker in the Marshall Islands? It looks like a flying saucer crashed into a reef atoll and half-buried itself. But the truth is actually almost as weird—the Tomb is a basically giant trash can filled with soil that’s been nuked dozens of times and also been exposed to biological warfare tests.

One could posit that the US government must hate the Marshall Islands. Uncle Sam detonated nearly 70 nukes on the place during the early stages of the Cold War. As if that wasn’t enough, they dropped biological weapons there too. The Tomb is filled with the irradiated and germ-filled debris left behind…oh, and also a whole bunch of soil the US shipped over that we’d nuked into oblivion on our own turf.

And now it’s threatening to spill that wretched horridness into the sea. As if the Marshall Islands haven’t been messed with enough by US government experiments. Climate change is pushing tides ever higher on the Marshalls, and local officials there are bracing for the moment when the Tomb is partially beneath the waves. A problem because the Tomb has developed thousands of cracks over the decades and isn’t in any way watertight.

According to the Los Angeles Times, American officials have known since the Tomb was built in the 1970s that it was already leaking radioactive waste into the soil below and considered moving the material back to the US mainland. “Nope,” they eventually decided, and let the Marshallese handle it.

“I’m like, how can it [the dome] be ours?” said Hilda Heine, the Republic of the Marshall Islands’ President. “We don’t want it. We didn’t build it. The garbage inside is not ours. It’s theirs.”

This is, of course, a problem for all of humanity not just our little corner of the world as surfers, but surfers have discovered perfect reef pass surf nearby in recent years. Slater has been surfing there for at least a decade. You may remember, in fact, this trip with JJF from a few years back:

Slater and John John and anybody else who has surfed the surrounding area may want to run themselves by a Geiger counter should they get the chance. Recent research suggests that some zones in the Marshalls are as radioactive as Chernobyl and Fukushima.

The story about the bombs and what was done to and about the people who lived there is alarming and enraging, to say the least, and one certainly worth reading. The above-cited LA Times piece would be a good place to start.

Reports now indicate that the Tomb actually moves a little with the tides as it is—something that wasn’t foreseen in the ’70s, but which is going to only worsen as seas rise further. The fear is that rising sea levels will eventually push the Tomb’s dome cover off the vault entirely, releasing nuclear terror into the ecosystem.

There is already a serious amount of coral bleaching, algal blooms and fish die-offs happening in the Marshalls, and the threat of nuclear contamination only adds to stress locals feel about rising sea levels. The US government’s role in covering up what’s happened there and refusal to repay the Marshallese for resettlement and cleanup efforts is shocking and disappointing.

It’s certainly something anyone considering a surf trip there should be aware of. It’s also something that a certain world-famous surfer with an unusually loud microphone and penchant for social causes could maybe consider looking into, considering how much fun the islands have provided him as he breezes in and out to play in the ocean.