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Energy Commission, today issued the following statement on AEC’S role in the decision to allow the R / It has been greatly satisfying to my fellow commission== &d me to take part in the decision, announced today by President Johnson, to return the Bikinians to their atoll. The attached AEC report on the radiation survey of Bikini was which declares the atoll once again safe for human habitation, represents the work of many highly qualified men, including the scier.tific team which surveyed the islands in 1967 and the special consultant committee of experts who produced the report. It has been just over 10 years s+nce the last nuclear test took place at Bikini on Juiy 22, 1958. The intervening years have brought a remarkable recovery on the AEC sponsored research teams noted in both 1964 The 1967 survey was made at of the Interior whose department fare of. the Bikini natives. ‘llhe their atoll in 1946 before the first nuclear test took place. The team which visited the atoll in 1967 included radiological and health physicists, marine biologists, a tropical
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agriculturalist, an anthropologic:: and representatives of the Pacific Islands Trust Territories, Department of the Interior. Eight of the mo=t highly qualifi ed experts available were asked to review the survey material. After meeting with members of the survey team and examining their reports, these consultants reached the unanimous conclusion that it.would be radiologically safe to allow the Bikini people to return to their home atoll. Their report was forwarded to the Secretary of the Interior earlier this month. While Bikini is best known as a weapons testing site, it has also contributed significantly to man’s knowledge of the long term effects of radiation on an environment. During the years when radiation levels were too high for people to live there permanently, the AEC sponsored several scientific studies on the atoll. In fact, Bikini truly served as a living ecological laboratory. Before it was either a proving ground or laboratory, though, Bikini was a home land. Having been closely associated particularly gratifying now to take part in the atoll’s return to usefulness as a home for the Bikinian people. Copies of the technical data from ~ survey are available for examination at the Public Document Room in AEC’S Washington office at 1717 H Street.