Reply #9: For awhile.....then nature will find a way - "Coral flourishing at Bikini Atoll atomic test site"

[Baclava]

CANBERRA, Australia — Coral is again flourishing in the crater left by the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated by the United States, 54 years after the blast on Bikini Atoll, marine scientists reported Tuesday.

A team of research divers visited Bravo crater — ground zero for the test of a thermonuclear weapon in the remote Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954 — and found large numbers of fish and coral growing, although some species appeared locally extinct.



I didn't know what to expect, some kind of moonscape perhaps. But it was incredible, huge matrices of branching Porites coral had established, creating thriving coral reef habitat," Zoe Richards, from Australia's James Cook University, said of the trip to the atoll in the South Pacific. "We saw communities not too far from any coral reef, with plenty of fish, corals and action going on, some really striking individual colonies," she said.

The 15 megaton hydrogen bomb was 1,000 times more powerful than the blast that destroyed Hiroshima, vaporizing islands with temperatures hitting 99,000 degres Fahrenheit, and shaking islands up to 120 miles away.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24132798/ns/world_news-world_environment

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Give it 50 years, but don't eat the shrimps