The US buried 85,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste beneath a Pacific island

On a remote island in the Marshall Islands, a concrete dome built more than four decades ago holds roughly 85,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste left over from the United States' Cold War-era nuclear testing programme. Known officially as Runit Dome and locally as The Tomb, the structure was built between 1977 and 1980 to seal off contaminated soil and debris from 43 nuclear weapons tests carried out by the US military across Enewetak Atoll between 1948 and 1958. The dome's concrete cap sits directly above a blast crater that was never lined underneath, and rising sea levels are now pushing seawater further into contact with the waste inside, prompting the US Congress to order a formal government study into the risks the site poses as the climate continues to change.How Runit Dome was built and what it containsRunit Dome sits on Runit Island, part of Enewetak Atoll, inside a crater created by an 18 kiloton nuclear test known as Cactus, carried out in 1958. Following the end of nuclear testing in the region, around 4,000 US servicemen worked between 1977 and 1980 to gather contaminated soil, military equipment and other radioactive debris scattered across the atoll and bury it in...