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US Will Clean Area In Spain Where Hydrogen Bombs Fell (nytimes.com)
HughPickens.com writes: Rafael Minder writes in the NY Times that almost 50 years after coming close to possibly provoking a nuclear disaster, Secretary of State John Kerry, following years of wrangling between Spain and the U.S., signed an agreement to remove contaminated soil from an area in southern Spain where an American warplane accidentally dropped hydrogen bombs. In 1966 a bomber collided with a refueling tanker in midair and dropped four hydrogen bombs, two of which released plutonium into the atmosphere. No warheads detonated, narrowly averting what could have been an explosion more powerful than the atomic strikes against Japan at the end of World War II. Four days after the accident, the Spanish government stated that "the Palomares incident was evidence of the dangers created by NATO's use of the Gibraltar airstrip," announcing that NATO aircraft would no longer be permitted to fly over Spanish territory either to or from Gibraltar. The U.S. later announced that it would no longer fly over Spain with nuclear weapons, and the Spanish government formally banned U.S. flights over its territory that carried such weapons.
Neither Kerry nor Spanish Foreign Minister García-Margallo said exactly how much contaminated soil would be sent back, where it would be stored in the United States, or who would pay for the cleanup — some of the issues that have held up a deal until now. Spain has insisted that any contaminated soil be sent to the United States, because Spain does not have plants to store it. Concern over the site was reawakened in the 1990s when tests revealed high levels of americium, an isotope of plutonium, and further tests showed that 50,000 cubic meters of earth were still contaminated. The Spanish government appropriated the land in 2003 to prevent it being used.
Neither Kerry nor Spanish Foreign Minister García-Margallo said exactly how much contaminated soil would be sent back, where it would be stored in the United States, or who would pay for the cleanup — some of the issues that have held up a deal until now. Spain has insisted that any contaminated soil be sent to the United States, because Spain does not have plants to store it. Concern over the site was reawakened in the 1990s when tests revealed high levels of americium, an isotope of plutonium, and further tests showed that 50,000 cubic meters of earth were still contaminated. The Spanish government appropriated the land in 2003 to prevent it being used.
Americium is NOT an isotope of plutonium, it is a decay product of Uranium/Plutonium, specifically
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium#Isotope_nucleosyntheses
Jack ass
They'll turn all that Americium into smoke detectors and we'll all get to listen to that fucking beep in the middle of the night because nobody can seem to make a detector that has a light sensor on it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I know the poster pulled it from the article, but Americium is a by-product from the radioactive decay of Plutonium, not an isotope of Plutonium. Isotopes have the same number of protons, and Pu has 94 while Am has 95. Plutonium converts to Americium via a beta decay, which causes a neutron to turn into a proton.
Of course there wasn't. This isn't nitroglycerin, and there are SO MANY layers of safety devices on these bombs this just not a possibility. The bomb has to be employed intentionally.
I know I shat on your carpet while running through your house uninvited, but why should I have to clean it up?
No warheads detonated, narrowly averting what could have been an explosion more powerful than the atomic strikes against Japan at the end of World War II.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Because when you go to a party, get drunk, and shit yourself on the sofa, you stay behind to help clean up or you never get invited back again.
More research needs to be done on this... Spanish Soil welcome to Idaho
The highly toxic US equipment left scattered over the years can be found and recovered by US crews that are used to dealing with such rather common events.
The US has mentioned it had a few nuclear related issues due to the huge numbers of nuclear armed flights around the world, crew issues, equipment issues.
United States military nuclear incident terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
List of military nuclear accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
has other details over the decades surrounding issues like accidental criticality, non-nuclear detonation of an atomic bomb, partial meltdown, weapons jettisoned and not recovered, fire, release of nuclear materials, nuclear bomb lost...
Most nations like to be seen to clean up after their own crashes to fully recover secrets, methods, materials and put a good media spin on been nice to nations where they have bases or want to have more bases.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Wells, we did drop four hydrogen bombs during a plane wreck....
Worst. Pilot. Resume. Ever.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
no, it's more like saying your grandfather took a dump on my carpet and the estate has been dodging responsibility ever since.
Yes, we'll all remember your name, A.C.
So much for accepting responsibility...
So we have agreed to clean it up where are we going to put it?
The US agreed to store nuclear waste from all of our reactors back in the 1960's they still haven't been able to decide where to put it over 50 years later.
If they do clean it up and ship it back to the US by boat it will stay on that boat at the dock until the boat rusts out and sinks.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
That's because the Air Force's official story is that there was no nuclear material on that plane, the bomb was filled with a weight to simulate combat conditions, but was not a nuclear weapon. So no great need to find an obsolete broken weight.
Learn to love Alaska
Nukes from day one have been designed to only detonate after a specific series of human and environmental interactions. A non-activated nuke is dirty, but it's never going to explode.
Are you serious ?
If it were Spanish H bombs on US soil would you let Spain off the hook for the expensive cleanup ?
Since you don't believe in responsibility, let's give BP a refund for clearing up their own mess too.
Fuckwit.
Sure they will. Right after the mongols apologise for Attila, the Normans for William, the spaniards for Cortez & Pizarro, etc, etc etc.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
That could be a cover story, or it could be real. The military does use 'weapon shapes' for training and such. No reason to risk a actual multimillion dollar mushroom farm for training. After all, more you play with it, the more likely it is that someone will break it.
i mean it sucks and all, but why should we be on the hook for this???
Well, let me see. The aircraft that crashed where ours. The bombs where ours. The pilots where ours and we where flying alone. The wreckage from the accident which was totally our fault fell on Spain... Hmmm...I don't know, Maybe we are responsible for the mess and should clean it up?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Although people associate uranium with radioactivity, it is only very slightly radioactive (half life > 1 billion years), so if you don't assemble a critical mass the danger is actually chemical. (Heavy metals have a strong tendency to be toxic.)
Other posters have said that here we are dealing with plutonium-239, which has a half life of 24000 years. That is orders of magnitude greater activity (shorter life) than uranium. I've reached the end of my knowledge here - which is worse, is the radioactivity or the chemical toxicity of plutonium-239?
TFA suggests they are worried about radioactivity: "A main concern has been that the remaining plutonium was being allowed to degenerate into other radioactive components like americium, which emits gamma rays that travel farther and are hard to block" but concern is not always well founded, and reporters don't always get it right.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
The posters here with the blase attitudes regarding nuclear weapons accidents ought to consider reading the book "Command and Control" and marvel at the fact we made it thru the cold war at all.
Regarding clean-up: when accidents happened on US territory we cleaned it up, even at Thule AFB, which is about as close to the end of the earth as you can get. We also contaminated the other end of the earth for good measure (leaky reactor at McMurdo Station Antarctica). In both cases the contaminated soil was 'disposed of' at the Savannah River Plant.
They'll turn all that Americium into smoke detectors and we'll all get to listen to that fucking beep in the middle of the night because nobody can seem to make a detector that has a light sensor on it.
Of course they have light sensors in them. That's how they know to wait until the middle of the night before they start beeping.
Americium is not an isotope of Plutonium. It's a separate element. Americium is atomic number 95 and Plutonium is atomic number 94. Isotopes have the same atomic number.
Surprised there's not a +5 comment explaining this already.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
"I'm guessing a lot of American dollars will also head that way since Spain is pretty much insolvent"
Debt-to-GDP ratio:
USA: 101.33%
Spain: 97.70%
If Spain is "pretty much insolvent" what does that make for USA?
Americium: a dangerous, unstable element which decays with a half life of 141 years. On the periodic table exists below the lanthanide europium, with which it shares many similarities. It has a silvery-white metallic lustre when freshly prepared which slowly tarnishes over time. While similar to europium it is much denser partly due to the larger mass of its constituent atoms.
Because when you go to a party, get drunk, and shit yourself on the sofa, you stay behind to help clean up or you never get invited back again.
On the other hand if show up and spend 40 years keeping someone from getting killed they might seem a bit ungrateful if they complain about you getting diarrhea while doing so.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Are they able to ask us to clean up the mess in fluent Russian? If not then maybe they should be a little more grateful.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
No, it's like saying your dad took a dump on my carpet, so your dad should clean it up; your dad hemmed and hawwed for 50 years before finally paying up, and you are pissed off that this might take the tiniest bite out of your inheritance.
If you mean war debt from WWII, the UK finally paid that off in 1999.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
berth defects
This was a plane crash, not a navel vessel. *nods*
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
>They were our nukes. It's not cool to drop nukes on a country you're not at war with.
To be fair, it's also not cool to drop nukes on a country you ARE at war with... that sort of shit leads to extinction level events.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Here is what’s really going on.
For the last fifty years the 6th Fleet has been headquartered near Naples, Italy. There are no shore bases in Italy for the roughly 1,100 Marines assigned to the fleet. The fleet is routinely called the Mediterranean fleet but the area it controls includes most of the eastern Atlantic and south western Indian oceans. (See map at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ). The U.S. has only ten full sized aircraft carriers and none are operating in the Med right now The real action is in the Indian ocean and the western Pacific facing China. http://www.gonavy.jp/CVLocatio....
For some reason the U.S. government and NATO have decided to move the Naples headquarters to Rota, Spain, which is potentially a much larger facility that Naples, with room for a few thousand Marines on shore.
Of course Spain wants something in return and we had to get the deal done before the Spanish election, which might bring in a leftist government. The best article on the deal is, as usual, in the British newspaper the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/wor.... To quote from the article (paragraph brakes removed):
“The Palomares clean-up deal is seen by many as a sweetener in exchange for Spain agreeing to Washington ramping up its military presence in the country. The number of marine personnel at the base in Morón in southern Spain is to be increased from 850 to 2,200, and to 3,000 in the event of a crisis. Meanwhile, the US navy base at Rota, near Cádiz, is set to become the largest in the Mediterranean. Talks with Spain’s right-wing government over the military build-up have intensified in recent months amid fears that a government less sympathetic to Washington’s strategic aims may be elected in December. Barack Obama said during the King of Spain’s visit to Washington in September that a change of government might harm bilateral relations. Kerry refused to comment on the possible outcome of the election but said that the US supports “a strong and united Spain”, a clear reference to the Catalan region’s aspiration to break away and become independent.”
So in the end the U.S. gets roughly 50,000 cubic meters of irradiated soil- how irradiated is still unclear. 50,000 meters equals roughly 80,000 tons. If the dirt is packaged first, it will take two-or-three medium-sized shiploads to get it to the U.S. and the equivalent of roughly 1,000 railroad freight cars or 2,000-3,000 forty-foot containers to move the dirt inside the U.S. My guess is railroad cars.
The present speculation says it will go to Idaho but I’m not sure. There is always the example of the USS Sturgis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... which had a small reactor that suffered damage during storms in the 1960s and 1970s. The ship had not been designed so the interior of the reactor room could be cleaned by water spray. So for 40 years the ship was stored in Quantico and on the James river, too hot to dismantle and yet not really a danger.
Finally I should say I’m not clear on why the U.S. and NATO have decided to move to Rota although I’ll throw out a few possibilities. First, it may be hard to find places to train in the central Med because