Nuclear Energy and Its Racial Legacy:
A History of Environmental Injustice and Exploitation

Tracy Turner

The preceding nuclear pollution article, "Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: 2024 Aftermath, Risks, and Insights, " examined the millennial-spanning consequences of nuclear disasters like Chornobyl and Fukushima, atomic testing, and depleted uranium warfare. The article detailed the health risks of radioactive isotopes such as Plutonium, Cesium, and Polonium and their ongoing impact on the environment and human health. 

The Legacy of Nuclear Power: Environmental Injustice and Racial Exploitation

The previous nuclear pollution article discussed extraordinary contamination of soil, water, and food items and radioactive long-term health consequences for the affected populations—especially the "downwinders" who are exposed to nuclear fallout. The nuclear narrative previously discussed atomic power from its origin in the Manhattan Project to its modern applications, which have been thoroughly implicated in racial and environmental injustice.

Many consider nuclear power a technological marvel, the prospected clean energy of the future. Still, in reality, nuclear is far darker when we consider its historical and continuing impacts: uranium mining, nuclear testing, and waste disposal. The fallout from atomic development has disproportionately harmed marginalized communities, Indigenous peoples, and people of color. From the development of the atomic bomb in the United States to nuclear testing across the South Pacific and the Soviet Union, atomic energy has been part of a long history of exploitation, displacement, and environmental degradation. Nuclear power, in all of its forms, is steeped in systemic racism, ecological colonialism, and the exploitation of vulnerable communities.

The Manhattan Project: A Legacy of Environmental Injustice

Nuclear energy has a very close affinity with the atomic bomb, which was designed during World War II. Too often, the Manhattan Project—an undercover United States government project to develop nuclear weapons—is heralded as a scientific success. Its origins are steeped in racial and environmental injustices, especially the way it tapped into the resources of marginalized (Apache, Ute, Navajo, et al.) communities.

The first uranium necessary for the bomb came from a series of mines across the American West, many of which were on Indigenous lands. Notably, the Navajo Nation and other Indigenous communities in the Southwest US suffered the brunt of uranium extraction. Over 500 uranium mines operated on or near Navajo lands between the 1940s and the 1980s. This Uranium extraction exposed the thousands of workers, many Navajo themselves, to deadly levels of radiation that led to high rates of cancer, lung disease, and eventually death. The US government and private mining companies took no steps to protect these employees, and there were no basic safety measures. The Indigenous peoples were not aware of any health hazards and also received no protective gear or medical care from mining firms.

This was not only the case in the Navajo Nation but spilled over into the neighboring Hopi, Zuni, and other Indigenous communities in the region. The damages go beyond uranium exploitation of their lands to their bodies. The lands were also destroyed due to uranium extraction (polluted mine tailings). Abandoned uranium mines still leak toxic and radioactive materials into the soil and water, standing as a danger even for eons of future generations.

Nuclear Testing: A Global Pattern of Displacement and Exposure

Uranium mining in the US represents one of the most critical chapters in the racist history of nuclear energy; the global pattern of atomic testing is equally condemnatory. Nuclear weapons testing, especially during the Cold War, has resulted in massive health crises, displacement, land grabs, and nuclear contamination, which disproportionately affected Indigenous communities and other marginalized populations.

In the Pacific, nuclear tests by the United States, France, and the United Kingdom have devastated the lives of many Indigenous communities. The US alone conducted 67 nuclear tests on the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958, with its islanders being exposed to radioactive fallout. The people of Bikini Atoll, an Indigenous Marshallese community, were forcibly relocated to other islands without proper warning or consent to make way for these tests. For decades, the Marshallese people were exposed to dangerous radiation, causing increased rates of cancer, thyroid disease, and congenital disabilities. Despite these health consequences, the US government has never completely compensated nuclear survivors or adequately cleaned up the radioactive contamination, thus leaving these people to bear the brunt of nuclear colonialism.

The government of France conducted atomic bomb tests in the South Pacific, precisely on the islands of Mururoa and Fangataufa, from 1966 onward. The radioactive fallout fell on native populations in French Polynesia without any prior knowledge or consent. Like the Marshallese, the people of French Polynesia were exposed to severe health risks like cancers, genetic mutations, and thyroid disorders. The French government, in a continuum of denial and negligence, has procrastinated in recognizing or providing any compensation to the victims despite decades of activism by these communities.

The outcomes of British nuclear testing on Aboriginal communities in Australia have been the same. The British atomic testing between 1952 and 1963 had been carried out at the Maralinga site in remote Outback South Australia. These nuclear detonations occurred despite the local Aboriginal populations living in the surrounding areas, with no notice given to them of tests and with a dangerous amount of radiation present. Many Aboriginals were removed from their native land, with the long-term health effects from the radiation exposure devastating them. This is further a form of racial irradiation because such decisions denied Aboriginal communities a voice on actions concerning their original territories, to which they are deeply spiritually and culturally attached—a cultural erasure added to the injustice already fomented.

The Soviet Union: Nuclear Colonialism and the Pollution of Tribal Lands

The Soviet Union left its stamp on the global nuclear legacy as well. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Soviet government initiated a series of atomic weapons tests in the remote regions of Kazakhstan, Siberia, and other areas where Indigenous peoples lived. To these tribal communities—the Kazakh and Tuvan, among others, who are from Central Asia and Siberia—the nuclear tests of the Soviet Union wrought environmental destruction that would be continuous over many millennia.

Within the period from 1949 to 1989, the Soviet Union performed more than 450 nuclear explosions at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan. The local people were never warned about the dangers; moreover, there was no proper evacuation of people and the withdrawal of food products from contaminated areas. As a result, many Kazakh people suffer from radiation sickness, cancer, and congenital disabilities. Whole villages were exposed to radioactive fallout without any monetary compensation or health care afterward.

Similar to the United States and France, the Soviet government did little in the way of informing affected populations of the dangers of nuclear testing and did less to provide aid for those suffering from long-term health effects. These communities, whose lands were targeted for atomic experimentation, became collateral damage in the Cold War arms race. Soviet nuclear colonialism, just like that of the West, focused its target on the most helpless and oppressed peoples, exposing them to environmental and health catastrophes they had no say in creating.

Uranium Milling, Waste Disposal, and Environmental Racism

Aside from the direct impacts of nuclear testing, uranium milling, and nuclear waste dumping further degraded Indigenous and low-income communities. Uranium milling is the process that turns uranium ore into a form that could be used in nuclear reactors or bombs; it produces excellent volumes of toxic wastes, known as "tailings." The tailings are radioactive and heavy metals (Lead, Cadmium, Atomic Metals), which usually leach into the soil and groundwater, poisoning the environment.

In the United States, uranium mills are built near and often within Indigenous communities, specifically in the American West. For example, communities in the Navajo Nation—a population already facing health impacts related to uranium mining and Nevada Test Area Downwinders—have also faced exposure to toxic waste produced through uranium milling. In most cases, this radioactive waste was stored in sites with no regulating body overseeing them. Air, water, and soil are contaminated, increasing the rate of cancer and other health complications. Water contamination often leaves an entire community dependent on tainted drinking, cooking, and bathing water.

Facilities for nuclear waste disposal have been situated in poorer and marginalized communities or areas of low political power. The US government has long sought to build permanent nuclear waste storage facilities on Native American lands, most notably the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. While the local Western Shoshone Tribe and other Native communities have opposed such plans, the US government nonetheless proceeds with plans to pursue nuclear waste disposal facilities on lands that are sacred and deeply culturally significant for the communities. It has been suggested by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to locate such sites in Northern Ontario where Indigenous communities would be exposed in their communities. The same tendency has been replicated in Finland, Sweden, and elsewhere, with nuclear waste dumps mainly being sited in sparsely populated areas of relatively powerless Indigenous or subaltern communities. Such communities have often been the least prepared to cope with the long-term health and environmental consequences of nuclear waste. At the same time, corporate and government interests have usually drowned out their voices.

The Ongoing Legacy: Environmental Racism in the Nuclear Industry

As we move into the year 2025, it is the legacy of nuclear energy as a tool of environmental racism and exploitation that intrudes upon daily life for already oppressed communities. Indigenous peoples around the world continue to be seriously impacted by mining, nuclear testing fallout, and radioactive waste. These multi-generational effects manifest in ongoing health problems, deteriorated environments, and land displacements.

While proponents of nuclear will often flaunt nuclear industries as the epitome of clean energy, the industry itself was built on a foundation of racialized exploitation of the Apaches and their cousins: the extraction process of uranium ore, nuclear testing done on the most vulnerable of regions, and, of course, issues with nuclear waste disposal contribute to an environmentally racist local and global history.  

Nuclear mining in Australia has been a contentious issue, especially concerning its impact on Aboriginals. Australia's uranium deposits are located on or near traditional Aboriginal lands. Aboriginal groups have expressed concerns over the environmental and health risks associated with nuclear mining, as well as the lack of consultation and consent in atomic mining and milling affecting their land. These communities have historically faced exploitation and displacement due to resource extraction, and nuclear mining raises fears of further harm to their cultural heritage, land rights, and health. Some Aboriginal leaders and activists have vehemently opposed nuclear mining, advocating for greater recognition of their rights and a halt to such operations on their ancestral lands. Within their culture and spiritual beliefs, Australian Aboriginals believe digging up yellow soil is a Spiritual and Cultural Sin.

The victims of the poisonous impacts of atomic energy have been those who are least responsible for the 'creation' of this technology and are among the most politically and economically disenfranchised. Nuclear energy carries with it a long history of racial and environmental injustice—from the very first creation of the atomic bomb in the United States to nuclear testing in the South Pacific, the Soviet Union, and beyond, exploitation of Indigenous peoples and people of color has been a constant feature of the nuclear industry. Uranium mining, milling, and waste disposal furthered this legacy by placing the marginalized at the front lines of environmental harm. It also encompasses an ongoing struggle for nuclear justice by the downwinders in Nevada, the people of Bikini Atoll, and the Indigenous.