50 YEARS AFTER BLASTS, BIKINI COMING BACK : ONETIME NUCLEAR GROUND ZERO GIVING WAY TO FLEDGLING TOURIST DESTINATION.

Byline: Nicholas D. Kristof The New York Times

After the 23 nuclear explosions that the United States conducted on this remote coral atoll in the 1940s and '50s, one almost expects to visit today and find just a few charred islets surrounded by brackish water emitting an eerie glow.

So the amazing thing about Bikini is how alive it is: a white sand island full of coconut palms swaying over a perfect turquoise sea, fish and sea turtles swimming languorously by the beach. There are also a few tourists, and many more are expected, because Bikini is now once more open to the public.

The paradox is that the same atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs that once caused immense tragedy to the Bikinians, even vaporizing some of their islets, have now made the island an unusually valuable tourist property.

Aside from its worldwide fame and relics like a bunker that once had a hot line to the White House, Bikini has the appeal of an untouched island and coral reef, as well as a lagoon offering some of the best scuba diving in the world.

Divers often like to explore shipwrecks, and there is no place with wrecks like the lagoon here in Bikini, one of the specks of islands scattered in the Pacific between Hawaii and Japan. Some 19 ships, including the only divable aircraft carrier in the world, lie at the bottom of the lagoon, where they came to rest after the United States tested what would happen to big ships when an atomic bomb exploded nearby. (They sink.)

Island habitable 

Most atolls in the Pacific are barely viable in a modern economy. But Bikini, because of its fame and the bombed-out shipwrecks, might emerge as one of the few that can thrive on tourism. The heartbreak of the Bikinians would become their sustenance.

Six scientific surveys have declared that the island is now basically habitable, so long as residents do not eat too many local coconuts. So the people of Bikini - who have been wandering about the Marshall Islands as ``nuclear nomads'' ever since the United States evicted them from their island in 1946 - are now considering whether to return.

``It's so beautiful here,'' said Edward Maddison, a Bikinian who is helping run a new scuba diving program for foreigners on Bikini. ``Sometimes I bring my family here, and my kids love to swim in the lagoon because it's so clean.

``Every time I go back, people ask me what it's like, if it's safe to come back to Bikini. If it's safe, we'll be coming back.''

The Marshall Islanders were in effect guinea pigs during the nuclear testing, and Western doctors still examine them to determine the delayed effects of radiation. But this time, the Bikini islanders say with a smile, it is they who are conducting the experiment: They stand back and monitor the results as wealthy Western tourists visit the island.

``We're very curious about the effects on those people,'' said Johnny Johnson, a Bikinian now living in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands.

12 years of testing

Bikini became a household name around the world in 1946 when the United States announced that it would test nuclear weapons on the atoll. The countdown for the first explosion was broadcast around the world, vast supplies of film were used to record the mushroom cloud, and Godzilla was said to have risen from Bikini lagoon after being disturbed by the explosions.

A skimpy new bathing suit for women was just coming on the market then in France, and its makers called it the bikini, advertising it as the world's smallest and hoping perhaps to suggest the shocking effect of a nuclear blast.

Over the next 12 years, 22 more atomic or hydrogen bombs were detonated here. One hydrogen bomb dropped over Bikini in 1954 was the most powerful explosion ever detonated by the United States, equivalent to 750 Hiroshima-type bombs. It vaporized one islet and part of two others, and it showered radioactive particles on Marshallese living on other atolls.

So the testing left Bikini deserted.

``It was really bad for the Bikinians, but anything bad can be turned into something good,'' said Fabio Amaral, a Brazilian who runs the Bikini dive program along with Maddison and an American, Scott Herman. It is precisely the enforced desertion of Bikini, Amaral noted, that has made it such a gem today.

``This is a wilderness,'' he added. ``This place hasn't been touched in 40 years.''

A large sea turtle made the point a moment later, lazily swimming in shallow water a few feet off the beach. Schools of fish dart about the coral, and Bikinians are also trying to set up a sports fishing program to attract Americans interested in catching bonefish and other game fish.

``I went out with two rods at first, but I had to go down to one because I had double-hookings too often,'' said Roderick Bourke, 26, an Australian who runs the diving resort and catches the fish that are served to guests.

Some dangers

Despite nervous jokes about how the Bikini landing strip has no need for runway lights, the sea and wind have long since dispersed almost all of the radioactivity, according to extensive testing. Indeed, Bikini now has less background radiation than some American cities. The problem is that the ground still contains cesium-137, a radioactive substance, and this is concentrated in fruits and coconuts grown on Bikini.

A small group of Bikinians sent back to Bikini in the early 1970s had to be evacuated in 1978 because their diet of coconuts resulted in an alarming buildup of cesium in their bodies.

There has been talk of scraping off the entire top layer of earth and sand of Bikini to get rid of the cesium, but the scientific studies agree that the simplest and cheapest way of dealing with this problem would be to spread potassium fertilizer. Plants prefer potassium to cesium, so if potassium were available they apparently would take it and leave the cesium alone.

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Map: BIKINI ATOLL

The New York Times