But a Marshall Islands senator said U.S. government assurances of safety are not an adequate response for the Marshall Islands, whose population is already radiation “stressed” from exposure to fallout from some of the 67 American nuclear weapontests at Bikini and Enewetak in the 1950s.
Small amounts of radiation traced to the Fukushima nuclear reactor have been recorded across the United States, and problems continue to mount at the Fukushima reactor nearly a month after the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, causing damage to the reactors.
“U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll has no comment on this,” Army Public Affairs Officer Ruth Miskovsky said initially late last week when asked if the Army was monitoring for fallout from the Fukushima reactors. Miskovsky, who is based at the Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, said Wednesday the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii has “not informed us of any radiation threat to Kwajalein Atoll resulting from the recent events in Japan. Based on all the information we have received to date, there is currently no threat to the region.”
“Talk of radiation has frightened people, but from everything I’m seeing, I’m not worried,” said American Ambassador to the Marshall Islands Martha Campbell. She confirmed that the U.S. Embassy is not monitoring radiation in Majuro and referred the government to WHO and other websites that are monitoring radiation emissions from Japan.
Marshall Islands member of parliament Tony deBrum said monitoring in other countries does little to reassure Marshall Islanders that there is no threat to the population in this western Pacific nation.
“We are concerned that with the thyroid stressed condition of the Marshallese population,” said deBrum, who represents Kwajalein Atoll, which includes a resident population of people from Rongelap Atoll, who were exposed to high-level nuclear fallout from the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini. “Any small amount of radioactive iodine may be over the threshold for the people here.”
