U.S. needs to work with Marshall Islands, fund cleanup from nuclear tests, leader says

Congressional delay in funding legacy cleanup from nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands — covered in a recent Government Accountability Office report —hurts relations between the United States and the strategically-located Pacific nation, the president of the Marshall Islands told a U.K. newspaper this week.

U.S. lawmakers are dragging their feet in funding a 2023 agreement between the U.S. and the Marshall Islands, straining relations between the countries, the president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Hilda Heine, said in a Tuesday article in The Guardian, a London-based newspaper. 

A $2.3-billion deal reached in 2023 for future U.S. nuclear remediation resulted from hard bargaining between the United States and the Marshall Islands, Heine was quoted as saying. The Marshall Islands provide a home to the Ronald Reagan Test Site. 

United States Cold War nuclear testing caused radioactive contamination in Greenland, Spain and especially the Republic of the Marshall Islands, where the U.S. Department of Energy should come up with a detailed remediation plan, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a Jan. 31 report.

The 64-page GAO report was prepared for U.S. Senate Energy and Public Works Committee Chair Tom Carper (D-Del.). 

The committee itself plans no action on the report, according to a spokesperson. 

The United States needs a Marshall Islands cleanup strategy “that is sustained, understandable, transparent” and done in collaboration with the islands’ parliament, GAO said in the report.

From 1946 to 1958, the U.S. carried out 67 nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands and the fallout contaminated several atolls, which are ring-shaped islands or reefs formed of coral. Some of the atolls remain uninhabitable, GAO said.

Marshall Island residents fear climate change could worsen contamination, “posing risks to fresh water and food sources,” GAO wrote. “DOE considers human health risk to be low,” but Marshall Island officials are skeptical and “believe DOE has downplayed the risk. This and other disagreements fuel distrust of DOE’s information.”

In January 2023, the United States and Marshall Islands reached a memorandum of understanding in which the U.S. agreed to future assistance totaling $2.3 billion, according to the GAO report. Congress and Marshall Islands Parliament must approve the agreements, which include setting up a new trust fund.

U.S. payments for nuclear cleanup have long been a sticking point on renewal of something called the Compacts of Free Association, which are mentioned several times in the GAO report. The compacts  govern U.S. relationships with the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia  and Republic of Palau. 

The three small Pacific nations, located roughly 2,500 miles from China, are strategically important to the United States and Congress should approve the Compacts of Free Association without delay, Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) said in a bipartisan Feb. 21 letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). 

The letter is signed by some Democrats as well as some lawmakers with significant constituents working in the DOE weapons complex, including Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) and Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.).

The post-World War II tests in the Marshall Islands were mostly atmospheric and underwater detonations, which contaminated several atolls, land and marine environments, GAO said. “Prior to testing, the United States relocated residents of Bikini and Enewetak.”

The Marshall Islands are not a big place, GAO said in a footnote. While the Republic of the Marshall Islands covers about 750,000 square-miles, the land size is only about 70 square-miles, comparable to Washington, D.C.

Since the 1970s, DOE, the Department of Defense and the Department of Interior have been part of U.S. cleanup — including construction of a dome protecting 100,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil — and environmental monitoring in the Marshall Islands.