Enewetak (also spelled Eniwetok) was the site of 43 US nuclear detonations between 1948 and 1958, including Ivy Mike in 1952 — the world's first hydrogen bomb test. Like the Bikinians, the people of Enewetak were removed from their home atoll before testing began, with promises they could return.
After the tests ended, the US military spent three years in the late 1970s attempting to clean up the contamination. Workers scraped radioactive soil from several islands and mixed it with contaminated debris from the tests, then buried it all under a concrete dome on the small island of Runit. The Runit Dome — as it has come to be known — is 115 metres in diameter, made of concrete that is now cracked and ageing, sitting directly on top of the coral reef with no liner underneath. Beneath it lie 85,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste. As sea levels rise and storm waves intensify, the dome is increasingly at risk.
Some Enewetak residents returned in the 1980s and the atoll is partially inhabited today, though restrictions remain on eating locally grown food. The coconuts are still considered unsafe.
Enewetak receives very few visitors and has no tourist infrastructure. Reaching it requires either a charter flight or passage on a field trip vessel from Majuro.