International   

Spain reveals nuclear contaminated land

Dale Fuchs

Madrid: The year was 1966, the height of the Cold War and the final years of the Franco dictatorship, when an American B-52 bomber carrying four thermonuclear bombs collided with a supply plane above the village of Palomares in south-eastern Spain.

Two bombs landed intact, one just outside the village of 1,200 persons in the province of Almeria, the other salvaged, unscathed, by a fisherman 8 km offshore in the Mediterranean, at a depth of 760 metres. The third and fourth bombs were damaged by a chemical explosion on impact, releasing about 20kg of plutonium into the centre of Palomares and surrounding hills.

Nobody died or is known to have developed cancer, but Spain’s worst nuclear accident took three months and the work of 1,600 U.S. specialists to clean up before it was promptly forgotten outside of Spain. The amnesia was helped along with a now legendary stunt by the former Minister of Tourism under Franco, Manuel Fraga, who took a much-photographed swim in the Mediterranean with the American Ambassador to prove the waters — and budding tourist industry — were safe.

More than 40 years later, the Spanish nuclear regulatory agency and a national research centre on the environment, energy and technology, CIEMAT, have concluded the first large-scale study of the extent of radioactive contamination around the village, now perched in the middle of the nationwide building frenzy.

It found that the area of soil contaminated with americium, a radioactive metal derived from plutonium, is more than three times larger than was previously thought: 300,000 square metres.

The largest pocket of contamination was discovered to the east of Palomares in the Almagrera hills, where one of the bombs released a cloud of smoke and radioactive particles that was spread by the winds.

Palomares is located next to the growing resort areas of Vera and Cuevas de Almanzores. As plans for holiday villas spread to Palomares, environmental experts feared that moving the soil during construction could release dangerous particles into the air. — Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Pakistan apex court takes government to task
Two doctors held in U.K. bomb plot
Rajapaksa’s appeal to Bhagwati
Anti-poverty targets in Africa will not be met, says U.N.
Tide begins to turn for U.K.’s flooded villages
Mugabe invited to Lisbon summit despite European Union ban
Spain reveals nuclear contaminated land
Diana celebrated
India for coal sector tie-up with Australia
U.S. Government still a “killing machine”: Castro

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu