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Scientists Locate Sunken, Radioactive Aircraft Carrier Off California Coast
HughPickens.com writes: Aaron Kinney reports in the San Jose Mercury News that scientists have captured the first clear images of the USS Independence, a radioactivity-polluted World War II aircraft carrier that rests on the ocean floor 30 miles off the coast of Half Moon Bay. The Independence saw combat at Wake Island and other decisive battles against Japan in 1944 and 1945 and was later blasted with radiation in two South Pacific nuclear tests. Assigned as a target vessel for the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests, she was placed within one-half-mile of ground zero and was engulfed in a fireball and heavily damaged during the 1946 nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. The veteran ship did not sink, however (though her funnels and island were crumpled by the blast), and after taking part in another explosion on 25 July, the highly radioactive hull was later taken to Pearl Harbor and San Francisco for further tests and was finally scuttled off the coast of San Francisco, California, on 29 January 1951. "This ship is an evocative artifact of the dawn of the atomic age, when we began to learn the nature of the genie we'd uncorked from the bottle," says James Delgado. "It speaks to the 'Greatest Generation' — people's fathers, grandfathers, uncles and brothers who served on these ships, who flew off those decks and what they did to turn the tide in the Pacific war."
Delgado says he doesn't know how many drums of radioactive material are buried within the ship — perhaps a few hundred. But he is doubtful that they pose any health or environmental risk. The barrels were filled with concrete and sealed in the ship's engine and boiler rooms, which were protected by thick walls of steel. The carrier itself was clearly "hot" when it went down and and it was packed full of fresh fission products and other radiological waste at the time it sank. The Independence was scuttled in what is now the Gulf of the Farallones sanctuary, a haven for wildlife, from white sharks to elephant seals and whales. Despite its history as a dumping ground Richard Charter says the radioactive waste is a relic of a dark age before the enviornmental movement took hold. "It's just one of those things that humans rather stupidly did in the past that we can't retroactively fix.""
Delgado says he doesn't know how many drums of radioactive material are buried within the ship — perhaps a few hundred. But he is doubtful that they pose any health or environmental risk. The barrels were filled with concrete and sealed in the ship's engine and boiler rooms, which were protected by thick walls of steel. The carrier itself was clearly "hot" when it went down and and it was packed full of fresh fission products and other radiological waste at the time it sank. The Independence was scuttled in what is now the Gulf of the Farallones sanctuary, a haven for wildlife, from white sharks to elephant seals and whales. Despite its history as a dumping ground Richard Charter says the radioactive waste is a relic of a dark age before the enviornmental movement took hold. "It's just one of those things that humans rather stupidly did in the past that we can't retroactively fix.""
"It's just one of those things that humans rather stupidly did in the past that we can't retroactively fix."
You mean just like the dumb things we do now but won't realize how dumb they are until later?
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
From the depths of trolldom!!!!!
Just another one of those things humans did in the past, huh?
Yep it's sure a good thing humans don't do stupid things anymore. All that stupid stuff is in our past. PHEW.
"which were protected by thick walls of steel" Iron eating bacteria are working on that right now.
The title suggest the ship was lost. Is this now news when something was found right where you left it?
It's very easy for an arrogant scientist to say that it was stupid, but what was a better option? In our more enlightened era, we don't dispose of them at all, instead we keep shuttling them around. I'd argue that the waste is much better disposed of there than it isn't now.
The amount of money we waste scuttling U.S. Naval vessels is shocking. We sink multi-billion dollar aircraft carriers as part of "live fire testing." Here's the USS America (CV-66) sunk off the East Coast after only 40 years of service. Why? The Navy chose to install diesel engines on it even after nuclear powered CVs had been launched. So, they decided the cost to replace the USS America's power plant with a nuclear reactor was just too expensive. Should be recycle thousands of tons of steel? Nah. There goes another $4.5 billion in taxpayer money.
That is what will happen to San Francisco... not Tokyo. San Francisco.
Probably higher levels of radioactivity coming from Japan, but it is interesting they decided to dump the ship in an area close to commercial fishing and off the coast of a heavily populated city eating said fish.
I bet you could build a conspiracy theory off that story =)
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Better tell the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to flee their homes. Those locations were also exposed to fresh fission products and other radiological waste just like this carrier.
...with laser beams! Radical!
Shades of a bad science fiction novel. Or even several bad science fiction novels.
Next up on the news at 9 -- replete from eating Fukashima, Godzilla shows up from the trenches off of Japan to eat the Independence before marching on San Francisco, plates a-glowing...
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Hmm, wonder why?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The carrier is just waiting for the zombie apocalypse. Not sure which side it will take.
Thanks nuke industry. That stuff will be poisoning the ocean for ten thousand years.
Also Canada has been burned in the past using this practice. Be bought a few used subs off the British and had them retrofitted. From what I have heard they have been nothing but trouble. They have been under repairs longer than actual service. Had multiple issues when actually in service, in that they leak, which is kind of a bad thing for a sub. They cost billions. There is a reason they have a shelf life and why the parent country no longer wants anything to do with anymore. Buyer beware.
Under water might be the best place for the ship to be. The water has a great stopping effect for the radiation. See this WhatIf ( not a comic, actually science) for a great example.
Admitedly, the fish don't know to stay away.
"Lost" can mean (1) you don't know where something is OR (2) you no longer possess something. In the second case you may no longer possess something but still know where it is. For example you lost something to a friend in a bet.
This second case is also somewhat of a nautical term. The Captain of a ship and its Chief Engineering can be standing on the bridge of the ship and the Chief Engineer may report the ship to be "lost", meaning uncontrollable sinking.
Also when a ship is sunk you only have the position of where it slipped below the surface, you don't necessarily know how it traveled on the way to the bottom. More importantly prior to GPS ship position weren't necessarily that accurate. Wrecks are often considered lost until someone has eyes (real or synthetic, ex side scan sonar) on them. Which is what seems to be happening here.
You can't recycle America's arsenal like it was a bag of soda cans.
Why not?
The Navy withheld the location of the wreck for decades, but the U.S. Geological Survey found its likely resting place while mapping the sea floor
But I know reading past the headline is too much bother.
Does anyone else notice that in every article where there is someone lecturing us in a denigrating fashion for something "bad" we do or have done, they have to refer to people in the third person as "humans". They never say "we", or even "humanity", no. It's always "humans", like the person doing the lecturing is above the level of us filthy "humans".
Is it nanny-talk 101 to speak of us in such a manner, or are the people doing this of another species?
Because the carrier doesn't fit into the recycling container.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah, I put an old frigate out on the curb for recycling last year and they wouldn't take it. The guy left a nasty note about it being over 35 kg.
We'll know where it came from :-)
The "people here who do not understand a topic" is aimed at the poster up above - "Richard_at_work" who got things so stupidly wrong that he suggested it would cost "billions".
For some reason I didn't catch that he was not the one that replied to my comment on his comment.