Impacts of US nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands and at the Nevada Test Site/ArjunMakhijani/to be presented at the meeting of the American Physical Society (Forum on Physics andSociety), April 18, 2023

"The U.S. nuclear testing sites in the Marshall Islands as well as the Nevada Test Site were chosen despite poor meteorological locations and despite the explicit recommendation of Col. Stafford L. Warren, the Chief of Radiological Safety at the July 1945 Trinity Test in New Mexico, to not repeat a test of similar magnitude (~25 kilotons) within 150 miles of human habitation. Far larger tests were carried out in both places, especially the Marshall Islands, with disastrous radiological consequences: much more severe on an individual basis in the Marshall Islands and affecting a far larger population in the United States. The 15 megaton 1954 BRAVO test at Bikini produced high doses, including at near-lethal levels in Rongelap, Ailinginae, and Utrik Atolls. Cancer estimates have significant uncertainties. One study estimated 500 excess cancers in the Marshall Islands, 3 to 4 percent of the entire 1950s population. US cancer incidence estimates: 11,300 to 212,000 excess thyroid cancers, mainly from milk contamination in the 1950s, and 11,000 excess deaths from other cancers. The Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act included people with cancer who lived in parts of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona during atmospheric testing, armed forces personnel and contractors, but not yet those impacted by the Trinity test or by the more intense iodine-131 hot spots (e.g., in Idaho, Montana, and Colorado). Marshall Islands compensation has been more fraught, intertwined with the process of independence from U.S. trusteeship, by exile, and mostly failed resettlement efforts. The United States has funded some compensation and partial clean up. Billions of dollars of claims are outstanding. The United States recognizes only four atolls as impacted, even though the entire country was affected. Many health problems are due to displacement, destruction of traditional livelihoods, and dependence on imported foods. Some the health care was part of scientific studies without informed consent. The humanitarian impacts of testing and use of nuclear weapons, especially atmospheric testing, including disproportionate impacts on women, children, and indigenous people were central to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which went into effect in January 2021."