Friday, August 7, 2015

Nuclear Testing in the Marshall Islands

The Marshall Islands were the nuclear test ground of the United States from 1946 to 1958, which was started one year after the end of the Second World War that terminated the Japanese mandate in Micronesia. The U.S. government conducted sixty seven times of nuclear testing program in Bikini and Eniwetok Atoll. Five years after the U.S. began test in the Marshall Islands, the U.S. started the nuclear testing in U.S. mainland also.
The total yield of 87 U.S. atmospheric nuclear tests at Nevada test site for eleven years from 1951 to 1962 was 1,096.0385 kilo tons. In the mean time, the one of 67 tests in the Marshall Islands for twelve years was 108,496.18 kilo tons, which was equivalent to 7,200 Hiroshima bombs. This means that 1.6 Hiroshima bombs were to be detonated every day for twelve years.
U.S. nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands released numerous radioisotopes for long period that contaminated their land and exposed residents allover the Marshall Islands causing radiation health effect until now.

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