The US has promised to investigate the risks posed by a leaking nuclear test waste dump in the Pacific, but won't commit to actually fixing it just yet.
Runit Dome - or "the tomb", as locals from the Marshall Islands call it - holds 85,000 cubic metres of soil mixed with radioactive waste, leftover from US atomic bomb tests in the 1940s and '50s. Climate change and rising sea levels are taking their toll on the site, which is covered by an aging concrete dome.
A 2017 report revealed it was leaking, and now the US Congress has voted to look into it.
The Los Angeles Times reports a section of the new National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Donald Trump last week, requires the Department of Energy assess the risks it poses to the environment and the local people.
But the original wording of the text, introduced by Democrat representative Tulsi Gabbard, included a requirement for the US to relocate the waste. That was taken out before it reached Trump's desk, the Times reported, as were references to climate change, though an assessment of how rising sea levels would affect it was included.
Rhea Moss-Christian - chairwoman of the Marshall Islands' National Nuclear Commission - said she was disappointed in the changes, but glad it was signed anyway, saying it would "yield useful results to better inform our decision-making".
A report last year found the dome didn't just contain waste from tests conducted at the site - it was also host to waste leftover from tests in Nevada, on the US mainland, as well as host to biological weapons tests.
A scientist told Australia's ABC News in 2017 Runit Dome was a "big monument to America's giant f**-up".
