Nuclear waste from US atomic bomb tests leaking into the Pacific Ocean, UN chief says

Speaking to students in Fiji, Guterres described the structure on Enewetak atoll in the Marshall Islands as “a kind of coffin” and said it was a legacy of cold war-era nuclear tests in the Pacific.

“The Pacific was victimised in the past as we all know,” he said, referring to nuclear explosions carried out by the United States and France in the region.

In the Marshalls, numerous islanders were forcibly evacuated from ancestral lands and resettled, while thousands more were exposed to radioactive fallout.

The island nation was ground zero for 67 American nuclear weapons tests from 1946-58 at Bikini and Enewetak atolls, when it was under US administration.