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Bikini Atoll, the site of the United States' largest hydrogen bomb test and the place that lends its name to the skimpy two-piece swimsuit, is seeking recognition as a world heritage site. "Nuclear bomb tests at Bikini Atoll shaped the history of the people of Bikini, the history of the Marshall Islands and the history of the entire world," according to the Bikini proposal released here on Friday. The 86-page document, to be presented to UNESCO's World Heritage program, has been drawn up by Bikini liaison official Jack Niedenthal and Australian-based consultant Nicole Baker. A world heritage nomination involves a multi-level review and a decision is unlikely to be made before June next year, Baker said.

Bikini Islanders attempting to overturn the recent dismissal of their billion-dollar compensation lawsuit against the United States government have received help from an unexpected source. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week on the rights of terror suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay could help the Bikini case, which is now pending in a U.S. federal appeals court, Bikini attorney Jonathan Weisgall says.

The lawyer acting for Bikini Islanders says there is little hope their case will go to the US Supreme Court as they seek compensation for the 23 US nuclear weapons tests carried on their atoll. The Bikinians filed suit in the US Federal Court of Claims in 2006 after a Nuclear Claims Tribunal issued a 563 million US dollar damage award in their favour but did not have the money to pay it. The Bikinians contend that the US Congress cannot take away their US Constitution Fifth Amendment protections for just compensation payments for damage the nuclear tests did to their islands. But the US Justice Department said in earlier court hearings that the US Congress provided a full and final settlement through a 150 million US dollar compensation fund in a Compact of Free Association approved by the US and Marshall Islands governments in 1986. The Tribunal proved incapable of paying even one percent of the compensation. The atoll is still uninhabited because of radiation contamination.--RNZI

The lawyer acting for Bikini Islanders says there is little hope their case will go to the US Supreme Court as they seek compensation for the 23 US nuclear weapons tests carried on their atoll. The Bikinians filed suit in the US Federal Court of Claims in 2006 after a Nuclear Claims Tribunal issued a 563 million US dollar damage award in their favour but did not have the money to pay it. The Bikinians contend that the US Congress cannot take away their US Constitution Fifth Amendment protections for just compensation payments for damage the nuclear tests did to their islands. But the US Justice Department said in earlier court hearings that the US Congress provided a full and final settlement through a 150 million US dollar compensation fund in a Compact of Free Association approved by the US and Marshall Islands governments in 1986. The Tribunal proved incapable of paying even one percent of the compensation. The atoll is still uninhabited because of radiation contamination.--RNZI

A panel of US appeal judges Friday dismissed a claim to enforce a billion-dollar compensation settlement for islanders from two former Pacific nuclear test sites, an attorney for the islanders said. But the attorney said the ruling did not exonerate the US government for removing the residents of Bikini and Enewetak from their homes and leaving their atolls uninhabitable after the weapons tests. A three-member panel of judges upheld a lower court ruling which dismissed claims filed in 2006 by the people of Bikini and Enewetak in the Marshall Islands, a former US territory in the Western Pacific. The two atolls, the sites of 67 US nuclear tests from 1946 to 1958, had been awarded more than one billion dollars by the Nuclear Claims Tribunal for hardship, loss of use of the islands and clean up following the tests.

The legal and political fight is expected to continue for Bikini Islanders and their lawyers, who are pushing for greater compensation from the government for nuclear bomb testing in the 1940s and 1950s that displaced islanders, exposed them to radiation, and decimated the land. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled today against the plaintiffs, saying an agreement between the governments of the United States and Marshall Islands in 1986 is a settlement that is beyond judicial review. The court affirmed a U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruling.

The Marshall Islands has become the 151st state to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, according to a press release issued today (see GSN, Oct. 9). The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization called the Oct. 28 move "highly symbolic." The United States from 1946 to 1958 conducted 67 nuclear test blasts in the atmosphere above the Marshall Islands' Bikini and Enewetak atolls. The treaty to date has been signed by 182 nations and ratified by 151 countries. In the Pacific islands region, 12 states have signed and 10 countries have ratified the treaty. Niue, Tonga and Tuvalu have yet to join the list of signatories. Before it can enter it to force, the treaty must be ratified by the 44 "Annex 2" countries. There are nine holdouts -- China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the United States.

The Marshall Islands has become the 151st state to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, according to a press release issued today (see GSN, Oct. 9). The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization called the Oct. 28 move "highly symbolic." The United States from 1946 to 1958 conducted 67 nuclear test blasts in the atmosphere above the Marshall Islands' Bikini and Enewetak atolls. The treaty to date has been signed by 182 nations and ratified by 151 countries. In the Pacific islands region, 12 states have signed and 10 countries have ratified the treaty. Niue, Tonga and Tuvalu have yet to join the list of signatories. Before it can enter it to force, the treaty must be ratified by the 44 "Annex 2" countries. There are nine holdouts -- China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the United States.

"Glenn Alcalay, a former Peace Corps volunteer on Utrik in the Marshall Islands, now an adjunct professor of anthropology at Montclair State University in New Jersey, has studied the impact of U.S. Cold War nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. In the following article, he relates the story of the BRAVO H-bomb test and its aftermath: John Anjain, then-mayor of Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands, told me in 1981 how a man working with the Atomic Energy Commission in February 1954 stuck out the tip of his index finger - about a half-inch - and said, "John, your life is about that long." When asked what he meant, the AEC man explained that they were about to explode a big bomb at Bikini. John inquired why they were not evacuating the people of Rongelap [130 miles away] beforehand as they had done for a series of A-bomb tests at Bikini in 1946, and was told that "they had not gotten word from Washington to evacuate the people." "

"The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from the indigious people of the Marshall Islands over whether they can sue the federal government again for blowing up and irradiating the land during nuclear tests in the 1940s and 1950s. The high court on Monday turned away the appeal from the people of Bikini Atoll and Enewetak Atoll, both part of the Marshall Islands. The United States detonated 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, then a U.S. protectorate under the United Nations. The blasts were equal to exploding 1.6 Hiroshima atomic bombs a day for 12 years. The federal government agreed to pay the people of Enewetak $385 million and the people of Bikini $563 million for the loss of their land. But only a token amount has been paid so far."

"Between 1946 and 1958 the United States tested 66 nuclear weapons on or near Bikini and Enewetak atolls, which had previously been evacuated. Populations living elsewhere in the Marshall Islands archipelago were exposed to measurable levels of radioactive fallout from 20 of these tests. In this carefully considered analysis, National Cancer Institute (NCI) experts estimate that as much as 1.6% of all cancers among those residents of the Marshall Islands alive between 1948 and 1970 might be attributable to radiation exposures resulting from nuclear testing fallout. Due to uncertainly inherent to these analyses, the authors calculated a 90% confidence interval of 0.4% to 3.6%. Why did the NCI investigate this exposure? In June 2004, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources asked the NCI to provide its expert opinion on the baseline cancer risk and number of cancers expected among residents of the Marshall Islands as a result of exposures to radioactive fallout from U.S. nuclear weapons tests that were conducted there from 1946 through 1958. In September 2004, the NCI provided the Committee with preliminary cancer risk estimates and a discussion of their basis in a report titled Estimation of the Baseline Number of Cancers Among Marshallese and the Number of Cancers Attributable to Exposure to Fallout from Nuclear Weapons Testing Conducted in the Marshall Islands. That analysis was based on a number of conservative assumptions designed to avoid underestimating the actual cancer risks and used information that could be collected quickly to provide a timely response. "

Bikini Islanders in the Marshall Islands say they have no option but to pursue the US government in court to get additional compensation for the US nuclear weapons tests of the 1940's and 1950s. Their latest case has been heard in the US Court of Appeals which is expected to give its verdict within five months.

The feature article of a new journal, published by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, contends that there are misconceptions about the links between radiation exposure and genetic (birth) defects. During the period between 1946 and 1958, a total of 67 nuclear tests were conducted on Bikini and Enewetak Atolls and adjacent regions within the Republic of the Marshall Islands. In recent years, there have been Marshallese children born to parents living in the northern atolls, diagnosed with Waardenburg's syndrome. "Based on current medical and scientific data, a connection between Waardenburg's syndrome and radiation exposure in the Marshall Islands is very unlikely," concludes the study.

The Marshall Islands is pressing the United States for more compensation for the damage caused by nuclear tests, officials said Thursday, after France announced it would pay its own victims. The United States conducted 67 atomic weapons tests on the atolls of Bikini and Enewetak in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958. Residents of the atolls and nearby areas were evacuated during the testing, and Washington has paid out more than 500 million dollars in compensation for health and other problems. But the western Pacific nation is seeking another two billion dollars after the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal ran out of money.

Bikini Islanders in the Marshall Islands hope their case for additional compensation for damage caused US nuclear weapons tests will yield results. Their quest to be given more money has been revived in a new round of litigation in the US court of appeal, with a ruling expected in the next few months.

For the third consecutive year, US nuclear test victims in the Marshall Islands have been denied compensation, with a claims tribunal saying Saturday that funds were too low to make even a token payment. More than two billion dollars is owed in approved payments for personal injury and other claims arising from the 67 nuclear weapons tests conducted by the United States at Bikini and Enewetak atolls from 1946 to 1958. The funding provided by Washington was "manifestly inadequate", said Nuclear Claims Tribunal chairman Gregory Danz.

"Words have precise meanings. The French word "renaissance" is made up of two parts -- "re" to repeat and "naissance" birth. It achieved wide use in the medieval times to describe Western Europe's rediscovery of Greek and Roman art, literature and architecture. Note the word involves three stages, a time of greatness, followed by a loss and then a revival. In no way can the word be used to describe things nuclear. Thanks to the diligence by the media, there never has been an initial time of nuclear greatness. Instead, we have an easy to remember list of disasters and dangers: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bikini atoll, Nevada desert, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Sellafield-Windscale, and Chalk River."

the dates of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings - March 1, 1954, is an important date. Fifty-five years ago, residents of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean and the 23 crew members of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon No. 5), a 140-ton tuna fishing boat from Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, were exposed to fallout from the test explosion of a U.S. hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll. The Daigo Fukuryu Maru tragedy touched off a movement against nuclear weapons among housewives in Tokyo's Suginami Ward - a harbinger of later organized antinuclear weapons movements in Japan. The boat now sits in the Tokyo Metropolitan Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall as a monument.

Don McCarty has witnessed what many have only seen in photographs. The 85-year-old Navy veteran from Sparta was aboard the USS Albemarle during the first post-World War ll nuclear testing in the Bikini Islands. McCarty, a gunners mate, was on deck when an atomic bomb was detonated 7 miles away. "We didn't even hear it," said McCarty who was in Branson on Thursday for the 64th National Day of Atomic Remembrance.