Bikini Atoll might sound like an idyllic island pickup , but any visitors would be good off wearing a biohazard suit than swimwear , as the nuclear fallout from run deport out by the US military over 60 year ago has left part of the Marshall Islands more radioactive thanChernobyl .
In the consequence of the atomic number 1 bombs that lay waste to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 , the US and Soviet governments insert into anuclear arms racethat became know as the Cold War . Like rival baboons trying to restrain each other with the size of their bottom of the inning , neither side ever really pushed the button , but both engaged in some serious nuclear posturing , setting off mushroom cloud cloud in distant testing sites as a showing of their might and stupidity .
Between 1946 and 1958 , the US conducted almost 70 nuclear bomb test in the Marshall Islands , a chain of atolls and volcanic island in the central Pacific Ocean , or so halfway between Hawaii and the Philippines . The turgid of these detonation was codenamedCastle Bravoand unloose the equivalent of 15 megatons of TNT in Bikini Atoll on March 1 , 1954 . Now that ’s a spicy meatball .
The explosion entirely aerify a nearby unreal island and left a crater measure 1.5 kilometers ( 1 mile ) in diam and 75 meter ( 245 foot ) in profoundness .
Radioactive falloutfrom Castle Bravo made the atoll unsafe for human inhabitancy , and researchers from Columbia University have now analyzed radiation levels in the Bravo crater , with some scandalous results .
write their findings in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the authors explicate how they dove to profoundness of around 60 meters ( 225 foot ) to take in 129 sample of deposit from different point across the crater . Levels of sure atomic isotope – let in plutonium-(239,240 ) , americium-241 , and bismuth-207 – were discover to be at least an rescript of magnitude higher than in other nearby atolls , and many times above the legal exposure limit fit by the US and Marshall Island government .
These answer build on existing research show that the long - terminus effects of nuclear examination may be further - strive than previously imagined , altering the surround to such a level that they may have even ushered in anew geologic age .
