For the third consecutive year, US nuclear test victims in the Marshall Islands have been denied compensation, with a claims tribunal saying Saturday that funds were too low to make even a token payment.
More than two billion dollars is owed in approved payments for personal injury and other claims arising from the 67 nuclear weapons tests conducted by the United States at Bikini and Enewetak atolls from 1946 to 1958.
The funding provided by Washington was "manifestly inadequate", said Nuclear Claims Tribunal chairman Gregory Danz.
Danz said beyond the lack of payout this year, new awards would be capped because of the limited compensation funding left.
The tribunal was established in the late 1980s with a mandate to adjudicate and compensate for claims arising from the US nuclear tests, many of which involved large hydrogen bombs.
Between 1986 and 2003, the US government provided a 150-million-dollar trust fund to compensate all claims past and future.
The State Department in a report to Congress last year said bluntly that the US had no legal obligation to provide more funding.
Outstanding claims total more than two billion dollars but Danz said that as of last month, just over 250,000 dollars remained.
Nearly half of the 2,000 people in this former US territory in the Western Pacific who have been awarded nuclear test compensation have died without receiving their full payment, according to Tribunal officials.
Danz warned the limited remaining funds would not support tribunal operations for another year, but said the court needed to keep helping those who could develop cancers from exposure to US nuclear tests in coming years.
