In Fiji last week, he told a crowd about "a kind of coffin" built by the US in the Marshall Islands to house the deadly radioactive debris from the 1980s.

The "coffin" is the product of a belated American response to the nuclear testing of the 1940s and 1950s.

In 1977, the Defence Nuclear Agency began a sustained cleanup of the nuclear debris remaining on Enewetak Atoll, a slender archipelago in the Marshall Islands' northwest corner.

The material was transported to Runit Island where a 100-metre crater remained from a May 1958 test explosion.

For three years, the American military dumped the material into the crater.

In 1980, a massive concrete dome - 45 centimetres thick and shaped like a flying saucer - was placed over the fallout debris, sealing off the material on Runit.

The US$218 million (NZ$335m) project was supposed to be only temporary until a more permanent site was developed, according to the Guardian newspaper. However, no further plans were ever hatched.

Now, disrepair and rising sea tides are making it a dangerously vulnerable site.

A strong storm could breach the dome, releasing the deadly nuclear waste.

The staying power of the material is a problem. Cracks reportedly have started to appear in the dome.

The concrete is only 45 centimetres thick and the ocean is rising.

The crater was never properly lined, so rising seawater could breach the structural integrity.

"The bottom of the dome is just what was left behind by the nuclear weapons explosion," Michael Gerrard, the chair of Columbia University's Earth Institute told the ABC. "It's permeable soil. There was no effort to line it. And therefore, the seawater is inside the dome."

According to the Guardian, a 2013 report by the Energy Department admitted radioactive material may have already begun to leak from the dome but cautioned the health risks were likely low.

"That dome is the connection between the nuclear age and the climate change age," climate change activist Alson Kelen told the ABC.

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• theguardian.com
• Image: Screenshot abc.net.au

But the French Polynesian president Edouard Fritch believes the church's plan is pointless. He says there are still avenues left for a dialogue with France.

Fritch says to get compensation it is better to negotiate with the French government than to seek the protection of international organisations which have no power.

He says he believes that the French president has understood what the aftermath of the nuclear testing has meant for French Polynesia.

The Church's secretary general Celine Hoiore said the case will be filed in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity as a result of 193 nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific.

The action is being taken for all the consequences of the nuclear testing, including contempt for the illnesses Polynesians suffer from as a result of the tests she said.

When Hoiore announce the decision on Sunday morning, at the conclusion of the Synod it was greeted with thunderous applause.

Later two former presidents, Oscar Temaru and Gaston Flosse responded on Tahiti Nui Television. " Temaru said "I think it is first necessary that we can get all agree ," For Flosse however, it was an " historic decision."

The French High Commissioner to French Polynesia said the nuclear testing in the South Pacific do not amount to a crime against humanity.

Rene Bidal said the definition of a crime against humanity centres on the Nuremburg trials after the Second World War and refers to killings, exterminations, and deportations.

He said the church should weigh its words, adding that a complaint as outlined by the church would be baseless.

Source

• radionz.co.nz
• radionz.co.nz
• tntv.pf
• Image: tntv.pf

Mr Juppé was Prime Minister from 1995 to 1997 under President Jacques Chirac, who made the controversial decision to resume nuclear testing in French Polynesia.

Mr Juppé, 70, is a member of the right-wing Les Républicains, and has been considering a bid for the French presidency in 2017.

The lobby trail last week led him to Tahiti where he met with several of the territory's anti-nuclear organisations.

After a two-hour meeting, Mr Juppé emerged to say the assertion France held until 2009 that its nuclear testing programme was clean was not based on fact.

"The affirmation which was to say that nuclear tests were clean is not right," Mr Juppé said.

"It is not the truth. Nuclear tests had, and still have, an impact on the environment which is worrying, it also has an impact on peoples' health."

Despite receiving more than 1000 applications, the French state only ever granted 19 people compensation for harm caused by nuclear testing at Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls between 1966 and 1996.

Current socialist president François Hollande also promised to revisit compensation laws when he visited Tahiti in February.

The legacy of decades of nuclear testing lingers in French Polynesia, where the effects of the 193 tests and the secrecy of the French state remained contentious.

It took until 2009 for Paris to acknowledge that harm had been done.

Frustrated with a lack of progress, the French Polynesian Assembly in 2014 passed a motion to ask France for close to $US1 billion in compensation, and Richard Tuheiava, an assembly member, last month pressed the case at the United Nations, something which Mr Juppé urged against.

"We will look for the path to reconciliation," he said. "We need to trust each other again."

The Marshalls is suing the five `established' nuclear weapons states recognised in the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) the US, Russia, which inherited the Soviet arsenal, China, France and the UK.

It is also suing three countries outside the NPT who have declared nuclear arsenals, India, Pakistan and North Korea, and the one undeclared nuclear weapons state, Israel.

The Guardian reports that in the unprecedented legal action, the Marshall Islands accuses the nuclear weapons states of a "flagrant denial of human justice".

It argues it is justified in taking the action because of the harm it suffered as a result of the nuclear arms race.

The Pacific chain of islands, including Bikini Atoll and Enewetak, was the site of 67 nuclear tests from 1946 to 1958, including the 'Bravo shot', a 15-megaton device equivalent to a thousand Hiroshima blasts, detonated in 1954.

The Marshallese islanders say they have been suffering serious health and environmental effects ever since.

Source

• Countercurrents.org
• The Guardian
• Image: 4.bp.blogspot.com

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• Island Business
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He was speaking at Pacific Conference of Churches Assembly. More than 200 delegates representing 34 churches and organizations are in Honiara for the week-long event.

Addressing the Assembly on Sunday Solomon Islands Deputy Prime Minister, Mannaseh Maelanga, also spoke about the important role for the Churches in address the issues of poverty, climate change and mining.

"These issues affect our people and we - governments and churches - must work together in these areas," Maelanga said.

On Saturday young Christian leaders made a similar call urging churches to take strong positions on the eradication of poverty and the protection of the environment.

Youth delegates from Maohi Nui (Tahiti) have asked young people at the assembly to join their quest to ensure that France does not conduct further nuclear tests in the region.

"What has happened in our islands with nuclear testing must never be allowed to happen again," Maohi Nui representative told delegates.

Source

• Island Business
• Image: PCC.org.fj