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