ATOMIC BOMBSHELL Nuclear tomb leaking radioactive waste into oceans has ‘rude message’ beneath crumb

A CONCRETE tomb that’s hemorrhaging radioactive waste into the world’s oceans has a very rude hidden message beneath its shell.

The men who built the dome in the 1970s sculpted a hand flipping the middle finger, which they buried inside the structure before it was sealed and left to crumble on a remote Pacific island.

Photo: This sculpture of a middle finer was left by workers at a nuclear dumping site on a remote Pacific atoll.

The Enewetak atoll in the South Pacific was used by the US government to test 30 megatons of atomic weapons – equivalent to 2,000 Hiroshima bombs – between 1948 and 1958.

After 43 nuclear detonations, thousands of people were sent to clean the islands, shifting 3million cubic feet of contaminated soil and debris into a blast crater.

Photo: Runit Island is host to a huge concrete crater containing lots of nuclear waste. Credit: EPA

But before they buried the waste under a concrete dome, they left a message inside, sculpting a hand flipping the middle finger as a crude warning. Paul Griego, who worked on the cleanup operation from June 1977 to October 1978, said it was known as the "Runit salute" after Runit Island, where the dome was built.

He said: "The dome is a monumental size, so we wanted to put something inside there, but this was during the Cold War so the idea of an official time capsule wasn’t going to work.

"We would laugh about the possibility of some future archaeologist coming there and trying to understand what this massive concrete structure was doing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Photo: The island in the South Pacific was used by the US government to test 30 megatons of atomic weapons.

"We thought, if they break into this radioactive vault they’re going to be cursed, so the idea of putting in the one-finger salute – the Runit Salute – kinda made sense.

"Plus, we were so limited in what materials we could use, we were on such an isolated island, and the only things we had available was what they brought in. "So… a rubber glove? Well, we had plenty of those so that worked."

But if Mr Griego and his comrades left their mark on the island, it also left its mark on them. Survivors of the cleanup operation blame their time on Enewetak for a range of radiation-related health woes, including cancers and infertility.

In 2014, Paul, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, stumbled across an online group where some of his former comrades were reconnecting – and what he found stunned him.

Photo: Due to the amount of radioactive waste store there, island is extremely dangerous

"Our members were dying," he said. "Dying of cancer. "Out of the nine men that I had regular telephone conversations with, four of them are already dead – this is since 2014." It’s feared that the contamination will continue into future generations.

"The atomic cleanup has been a real life curse," said Mr Griego. "So much so that even our chromosomal damage could be passed down to our children and their children."

Photo: Runit Island is in the Pacific Ocean

Given the damage wrought by the dome, the middle-finger message turned out to be more apt than anyone realized at the time. "The Runit salute turned out to be the right message in several ways," said Paul, 62. "One message is what’s happened to the men that were actually tasked to build this dome? What happens now to the Marshallese, the islanders? "What happens now to the Pacific Ocean, to the rest of the world? The dome is leaking and it has been leaking from the beginning."

The US government does not recognize those who worked to clean Enewetak as atomic veterans, so they cannot receive radiation exposure compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs.The dome itself is menaced by the wear and tear that comes with 40 years of exposure, as well as rising sea levels.Survivors can apply for compensation from the VA on a case-by-case basis, but the state continues to insist that Enewetak personnel encountered only low levels of radiation.Veterans say that the dome is already leaking radiation into the Pacific, with tidal waters flushing through the structure in what’s been called a "gigantic radioactive toilet".

Added by the Enewetak Atoll Cleanup Veterans: