Radioactive Pacific

Radioactive pollution of the World Ocean has been going on ever since the very first nuclear tests held on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in 1946. The ocean gets polluted by radioactive substances in different ways. First of all, this happens because of underwater nuclear blasts (six of them were performed before 1963) and nuclear, tests on the ocean’s surface (more than 30 were performed). Underground nuclear explosions can also entail dangerous consequences.

In particular, leakage of radioactive substances into the ocean have often happened at the French nuclear range on Mururoa Islands in Polyhesea.

Environmental pollution by radioactivity has the greatest effect on living thing, causing death or anomalities in its development. The radioactive pollutants get through the soil, water or air into plants and the tissnes of animals and from them into the human organism. This has been confirmed by the Bikini tragedy. The nuclear tests held there by the USA in 1946. 1958 dramatically changed the plant life there (and not only as a result of the blast effects). The coconut palms and the breadfruit tress were replaced by the meagre thickets of bushes. The content of the isotopes of strontium, ceasium and plutinium in the Bikinias, who returned to the atoll, started to dangerously rise even in1978. It was established that poisons got into the human organism through food of local plants and fish. The inhabitants had to be evacuated again.