By May 1978, a high percentage of the Marshallese
body levels were above the maximum permissible dose
and the Bikinians were evacuated again.
Conard and representatives of other
U.S. government agencies, in
apologizing for the complications
which occurred, frequently say that
(left) People walking on the
concrete dome covering aa stomic bomb
erater on KRoait Island, Exewetak
atoll. (below) Nuclear clean ap o8
Raenit Isiand. (left) U.S. Army
personae! in fall protective gear.
(right) Army personne! mixing
platoniam-costsminated soi! with cement
to form the massive coacrete dome.
Robert Conard of Brookhaven
National Laboratory—which has
coordinated the Marshall Islands
medical
program
since
1954—
estimated the health nsks of the exposure:
**Assuming that they [143 people]
hadall been there since 1970 and received the average estimated inte-
grated total dose of 2.6 rems for the
penod, based on known radiationinduced risk data, one would expect
only about 0.005 total cases of
leukemia to develop in that population as a result of their radiation ex-
posure.
The need for further medical
examinations is not indicated based
on possible radiation effects as-
sociated with such low doses.""'*
But Dr. Konrad Kotrady, a former
Brookhaven resident physician in
the Marshalls, strongly disagreed
with this philosophy:
‘*The people fail to understand
how scientists can say they do not
know all the possible late effects the
radiation can cause . . . and then tell
the people a medical program is un-
necessary.
If in 40 or 50 years medical problems do occur as a result of the exposure, it would be better if a well
designed medical program was
already in progress to detect the
problems.**'*
December 1980
radiation measurement techniques
then were not as sophisticated as
those available today: that the surveys of Bikini were far less extensive
than those subsequently carned out
at Enewetakatoll.'* The facts. how-
ever, suggest otherwise.
In 1972-1973, the United States
conducted an ‘exhaustive radiological survey of Enewetak.’’ which included both ground and aenal surveys of the islands. according to the
Department of Energy. It was not
done at Bikini, however. In fact, it
wasn't until the Bikiniansfiled a fed-
eral law suit in 1975, asking for a
thorough radiological survey of Bi-
kini and the northern Marshall Is-
lands, that the government agreed to
do it. But because of three years of
bureaucratic infighting among the
Departments of Energy. State and
Intenor, the radiological survey was
not conducted until afrer the evacu-
ation of Bikini in late 1978.
The United States did have
sophisticated
techniques
for
measunng radiation at the outset of
the Bikini resettlement: it chose to
employ them only at Enewetak.
U.S. policies with respect to protecting the health of the Marshallese
have been totally inconsistent. For
example, in 1946, pnor to the first
nuclear test senes, Operation Crossroads, the people from islands within
a radius of 300 miles of Bikini—
including the Rongelap—were
evacuated as a safety precaution."’
The yield of these bombs was ap-
proximately 20 kilotons. But in 1954,
there was no official warning of the
Bravo test, much less an evacuation
of the populations. Yet Bravo was
the largest U.S. hydrogen bomb
tested—more than 15 megatons.
More than 200 Marshallese on
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 27