Bikini Radiobiological Laboratory 1950 Atomic Energy Commission

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'Effects of radioactivity from the 1946 atomic tests at Bikini Atoll, on plants and marine life in the area three years  later.'

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atoll

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll program was a series of 23 nuclear weapons detonated by the United States between 1946 and 1958 at seven test sites on the reef itself, on the sea, in the air, and underwater. The test weapons produced a combined fission yield of 42.2 Mt of explosive power.

The United States was engaged in a Cold War nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union to build more advanced bombs from 1947 until 1991. The first series of tests over Bikini Atoll in July 1946 was code named Operation Crossroads. The first test was dropped from an aircraft and detonated 520 ft (160 m) above the target fleet. The second was Baker and was suspended under a barge. It produced a large Wilson cloud and contaminated all of the target ships. Chemist Glenn T. Seaborg was the longest-serving chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and he called the second test "the world's first nuclear disaster."

The second series of tests in 1954 was code named Operation Castle. The first detonation was Castle Bravo, which tested a new design utilizing a dry fuel thermonuclear bomb. It was detonated at dawn on March 1, 1954. Scientists miscalculated and the 15 megaton (Mt) nuclear explosion far exceeded the expected yield of 4 to 8 Mt (6 Mt predicted), and was about 1,000 times more powerful than each of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The scientists and military authorities were shocked by the size of the explosion, and many instruments were destroyed which they had put in place to evaluate the effectiveness of the weapon.

Authorities had promised the Bikini Atoll's residents that they would be able to return home after the nuclear tests. A majority of the island's family heads agreed to leave the island, and most of the residents were moved to the Rongerik Atoll and later to Kili Island. Both locations proved unsuitable to sustaining life, and the United States had to provide residents with on-going aid. Despite the promises made by authorities, this and further nuclear tests (Redwing in 1956 and Hardtack in 1958) rendered Bikini unfit for habitation, contaminating the soil and water, making subsistence farming and fishing too dangerous. The United States later paid the islanders and their descendants $125 million in compensation for damage caused by the nuclear testing program and their displacement from their home island. A 2016 investigation found radiation levels on Bikini Atoll as high as 639 mrem yr−1, well above the established safety standard for habitation. However, Stanford University scientists reported "an abundance of marine life apparently thriving in the crater of Bikini Atoll" in 2017. Research is being undertaken on how marine organisms are surviving in a radiation-filled environment, which could lead to improved understanding of cancer and increased longevity...

Most fish have relatively short lifespans, and Palumbi suggested that "it is possible the worst-affected fish died off many decades ago… and the fish living in Bikini Atoll today are only subject to low-levels of radiation exposure as they frequently swim in and out of the atoll." Nurse sharks have two dorsal fins, but Palumbi's team observed individuals with only a single fin, and they theorized that they might be mutations. Pambuli and his team have focussed on the hubcap-sized crabs, as their coconut diet is contaminated with radioactive caesium-137 from ground water, and on the corals, because both have longer life-spans that allow the scientists "to delve into what effect the radiation exposure has had on the animals' DNA after building up in their systems for many years."

Bikini Atoll remains uninhabitable for humans due to what United Nations reporter Călin Georgescu described as "near-irreversible environmental contamination". Gamma radiation levels in 2016 averaged 184 mrem yr−1, well above the maximum allowed for human habitation, thereby rendering the water, seafood, and plants unsafe for human consumption. Timothy Jorgensen reports on the increased cancer risk among the residents of the nearby islands, especially for leukemia and thyroid cancers...