Dealing with the harm we have done to our natural environment is one of the global priorities in environmental protection, and we are nearing the midpoint of the UN’s decade on ecosystem restoration. Efforts to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean must also include dealing with the radioactive legacy of nuclear weapons.  

Around the world, nuclear weapons facilities have contaminated land and water with radioactive waste lasting at least 100,000 years. Efforts to clean up the sites have cost billions of dollars over decades, and are still largely unfinished and inadequate.  One of the most emblematic examples of the carelessness with which nuclear-armed states dealt with the radioactive legacy of their nuclear tests is with is the Runit dome in the Enetewak (or Bikini) atoll in the Marshall Islands. In the 1970s, the US government spent $105 million to dump over 73,000 m3 of radioactive debris, including plutonium-239 from its nuclear tests into a crater created by these tests and bury it under a huge concrete dome. That dome now shows signs of structural weakness and could crack under the pressure from rising sea levels. The U.S. government now contends that the crater was built to store the debris, not protect the rest of the nearby environment from its contents.

Of course, it is not only the US that has not dealt with the environmental effects of its nuclear weapons production, testing, and use. The same can be said for the British in Australia, the French in Algeria and in the Pacific, and the USSR in Kazakhstan, for example. 

Read 5 case studies about (the lack of) environmental remediation

Read about the Hanford site in the US. 

International efforts to address nuclear harms, grounded in human rights principles, have increased in recent years. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is the only international legal instrument outlawing the use, and threat of use, of nuclear weapons. It is a successful prevention mechanism, and contains provisions for environmental remediation and victim assistance.  The treaty also assigns responsibility for environmental remediation of areas affected by nuclear weapons use and testing to State Parties who have conducted these acts (Art. 7, para 6). States are currently discussing establishing an international trust fund to support this work.