"Four of
Enewetak's 40 islands were completely vaporized by the tests, with one thermonuclear blast leaving a two-kilometer-wide crater where an island had been just moments before," ABC News' Mark Willacy noted in his investigative piece.
The safety question has been a difficult one for the people of Bikini and
Enewetak atolls.
"The Department of Energy has provided scholarships for young people to study nuclear issues so that they can better understand nuclear legacy questions, and they monitor Runit Dome, which is a repository for nuclear waste in
Enewetak."
In the 1970s, the US government endeavoured to 'clean up'
Enewetak Atoll, the other ground zero location besides Bikini, by creating a temporary nuclear storage facility on Runit Island.
Ebert, "Growth and size of the tropical sea cucumber Holothuria (Halodeima) atra Jager at
Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands," Pacific Science, vol.
The United States conducted nuclear tests on and around the Bikini and
Enewetak Atolls, two of the 29 atolls and five islands comprising the Republic of the Marshall Islands, from 1946 to 1958.
At 15 megatons, 'Castle Bravo,' was unexpectedly the largest (1) of 67 tests of nuclear and thermonuclear devices conducted at the Bikini and
Enewetak atolls in the northern Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958.
Alvaro de Saavedra stayed at an atoll (possibly
Enewetak or Bikini) for eight days in 1529 (Hezel 1983 in Rainbird 2004: 14; Spennemann 2004: 3).
(45) Thermonuclear warheads had to wait until the successful conclusion of physicist Edward Teller's work with the November 1, 1952, Ivy Mike test of the hydrogen bomb at
Enewetak atoll in the Pacific.
Enewetak, the Air Force and Nuclear Defense Agency were conducting