Bikini

Bikini, atoll in the Pacific Ocean, one of the Marshall Islands, in the Ralik Chain. The 36 islets of the atoll cover an area of about 5 sq km (2 sq mi) and surround a lagoon 33 km (21ymi) long by 17 km (11 mi) wide with an entrance through Enyu Channel. The indigenous population was resettled on Rongerik, a nearby atoll, before the United States began tests of atomic weapons on Bikini in July 1946. In 1949 the population was moved again, to the island of Kili, also in the Marshall Islands. Further nuclear-weapon testing was carried out in 1954. Some islanders returned in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but they were removed again in the late 1970s because of potentially harmful levels of radioactivity on Bikini. In the early 1990s the United States Congress provided US$150 million to help decontaminate the land. However, the decontamination programme was unsuccessful and instead generated vast quantities of radioactive soil. The atoll remains uninhabited.