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Saturday, May 10, 2014

BROKEN ARROWS - WHEN THE UNITED STATES DROPPED H-BOMBS IN SPAIN - THE ONGOING COVERUP OF HEALTH EFFECTS - THE REFUSAL TO PROPERLY CLEAN UP

Broken Arrow refers to an accidental event that involves nuclear weapons, warheads or components, but which does not create the risk of nuclear war.
 
How the US dropped H-bombs on a beach in Spain... and turned its back on hundreds of British expats who have been caught in the deadly nuclear fall-out zone.
By Christopher Morris, Daily Mail

  • Two US Air Force planes - a B-52 and a tanker collided mid-air in 1966
  • B-52 carried four nuclear bombs, three fell over Palomares in Andalucia
  • Non-nuclear explosives in two of the weapons detonated upon impact
  • The explosion contaminated a 0.78 square mile area with plutonium
  •  
    Monday, January 17, 1966, will forever be a day of embarrassment for the US Air Force, and one  of infamy for the village of Palomares on Spain’s Andalucian coast.  It was on that day that a giant  B-52 bomber from the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina, was completing a 24-hour global patrol at the height of the Cold War.  Nestling in the bomb bay was a deadly cargo: four 1.5 megaton Mark 28 thermonuclear hydrogen bombs, each about 70 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima.
     
    On the last leg of the flight towards home, during refuelling at 31,000ft with a KC-135 tanker, disaster struck. An official investigation later concluded that the B-52 overran in manoeuvres to hook up with the trailing fuel boom and rammed the tanker.  There was an explosion and a huge fireball engulfed both aircraft. All four men on the tanker and three of the bomber’s crew died instantly. Four others managed  to eject before plunging into the  sea where they were rescued by Spanish fishermen. 
     
    And the H-bombs? Mercifully there was no detonation. But while one splashed into the Mediterranean and a second drifted down on its parachute and landed intact in a dried-up river bed, the remaining two bombs split open upon impact, scattering plutonium and covering the tomato fields of Palomares with a fine and deadly radioactive dust.  The rest of the world has mostly forgotten – or simply doesn’t care.
     
    Today’s holidaymakers are as oblivious to this brush with Armageddon as they are ignorant of the ancient history of these beaches where Hannibal’s war elephants once landed. The reality, however, is that Spain’s so-called Costa Bomba is scarred for ever – and  that the toxic legacy is getting worse, not better.  There are 1,600 residents in this tiny farming and fishing village, half of them expatriate British, and they are understandably alarmed about the vast acres of ‘no-go’ farmland where, even now, men in masks drill deep down to search for the decaying remnants of H-bombs.
     
    They are dismayed that America’s promises to clean up the mess they made have never been fulfilled, despite continuing pressure from the Spanish government.  And they are furious that while America has fined BP £2.5 billion for violating US environmental and pollution laws after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, it has so far paid the residents of Palomares a pittance of £353,000 for the ruination of their livelihoods and, quite possibly, their health. 
     
    The nuclear accident was not on the agenda when US President Barack Obama met Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in January, despite assurances made by the American Secretary for Energy, Ernest Moniz, that he would personally ‘look into the matter in detail’. 
     
     ‘The Spanish government has been negotiating with the Americans for years without success to return and get rid of the radiation threat,’ said 70-year-old Ken Lee, originally from Stock, near Chelmsford in Essex, who now lives near Palomares.  ‘It’s alarming when more hot spots keep being found that blight the  land on which the farmers depend for their livelihood.’ 
     
    His wife Carole, 71, added: ‘We’re disgusted at the way the Americans have been bullying the British over the Mexico oil spill disaster.  ‘There’s little sign of that “special relationship” and no sign of President Obama fulfilling the promise to clean up the H-bomb mess in Palomares.’  
     
    Georgette Hurcomb, another local expat, who  is from Islington, North London, said: ‘America’s lack of effort to come and clean up the nuclear poison is a disgrace. Many farming families have given up and left because they’re banned from growing crops in certain areas.’
     
    Indeed, the passage of time has  only made the problem more deadly still. Nearly five decades on, the plutonium has degraded to become americium, a substance that emits lethal alpha particles.
     
    ‘I would be very surprised if local people haven’t suffered already some increased risk of cancer, or leukaemia or lymphoma,’ explained British scientist Dr Christopher Busby. ‘They should be very concerned.  ‘In 1966 it wasn’t appreciated how dangerous this stuff was. Then the emphasis was mainly on external radiation and gamma doses. But after years of research, we know that internal radioactive particles, like plutonium, are singularly hazardous.’
    Where bombs fell
     
    Illustration above from Daily Mail
     
    Link to this article
     
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    RELATED
     
    From an article in May 2013 on this blog:
     
    Based on the book  A Short History of Nuclear Folly by Rudolph Herzog, Business Insider has posted an interactive map to locate the "Broken Arrows", a term used for lost nukes, and accidents involving nuclear weapons or nuclear material.

     
    Read more

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    United States Nuclear Incident Terminology
     
    More articles on the nuclear issue  - http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/search/label/Nuclear
     
     
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