The 100-Year Life Health Education and Government
Satellite imagery shows that Russia, China and the US are building roads and other infrastructure in historic nuclear test sites, raising fears that they could soon not be historic any more, and back in use. A powerful piece of multimedia storytelling in the NYT offers a reminder of what that could mean: raised levels of radioactive strontium-90 in teeth and bones, off-the-charts levels of cancer, diabetes, stillbirth and miscarriage in "downwind" populations near nuclear test sites, and a resumption of the mad race to build ever bigger bombs that was supposed to end with the cold war. The US poisoned the lives and destroyed the homelands of the Marshall islanders. The UK did similar in the Australian outback, and France in French Polynesia. Some of those affected have received compensation. None has ever had an official apology.
