Palomares nuclear accident

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The nuclear accident in Palomares with nuclear weapons of the Strategic Air Command of the US Air Force happened on January 17, 1966 near Palomares , a small town on the Spanish southeast coast between Almería and Cartagena .

Course of events

In a Auftankmanöver in the Saddle Rock Refueling Area on the Spanish Mediterranean coast collided one with hydrogen bombs from the type B28RI stocked B-52G bombers of the 68th Bomb Wing, which as part of Operation Chrome Dome of the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina in the USA arrived on a US Air Force KC-135 tanker at an altitude of 9,000 meters.

There was an explosion. The 150,000 liters of fuel on board the KC-135 went up in flames and both planes crashed. All four crew members of the tanker died. Five members of the seven-man bomber crew were able to get out of the plane with the ejection seat, but one of the parachutes did not open, so that a total of seven of the eleven soldiers died. One crew member landed on the Spanish mainland and three others went down a few kilometers from the coast, where they were rescued by Spanish fishermen.

Search area of ​​the 4th hydrogen bomb

Three of the four hydrogen bombs , each with a 1,45- MT - warhead aboard the B-52 bomber crashed in the residential area of Palomares on the floor, the fourth fell eight kilometers off the coast into the sea. The safety precautions prevented a thermonuclear explosion, but the highly explosive conventional charges in two of the bombs detonated and contaminated approximately 170 hectares of agricultural land with the radioactive components of the warheads. In a three-month operation, approx. 1400 tons of soil from radioactively contaminated tomato plantations were removed and taken to the Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina on the ship USNS Boyce .

The hydrogen bomb recovered from the sea

More than 33 US warships sealed off the area of ​​the crash site of the fourth hydrogen bomb in the Mediterranean, which the Spanish fisherman Paco Orts, who had seen the bomb come down by parachute, was able to mark. Divers and diving boats then searched the ocean floor. It was not until April 7, 1966, that the rescue submarine DSV Alvin recovered the bomb from a depth of 869 meters and brought it on board the USS Petrel . The recovery operation cost six million US dollars. The US Navy diver Carl Brashear , whose life and military career is portrayed in the Hollywood film Men of Honor , took part in this rescue operation .

The incident sparked protests from opponents of nuclear power and nuclear weapons and led to diplomatic entanglements between Spain and the United States. Four days after the incident, the Spanish government announced that NATO aircraft would not be allowed to fly over Spanish territory in the future , and a formal ban followed on January 29. This accident, as well as the crash of a nuclear weapon-laden B-52 bomber near Thule Air Base on January 21, 1968, which also resulted in radioactive contamination, in which not all parts of the hydrogen bombs could be found, ultimately led to the operation being discontinued Chrome Dome , the United States' nuclear bomber strategy.

In its 1975 final report, the US Department of Defense stated that the wind prevailing on the day of the accident raised dust containing plutonium and that "the full extent of the spread would never be known".

It wasn't until 1985 that residents were given access to their medical records. Around 522 residents of Palomares received US government compensation totaling US $ 600,000 and the city received an additional US $ 200,000 for a desalination plant.

Follow-up measurements in 2004 revealed a continued high level of radioactivity in the soil of some areas in the vicinity of Palomares. The affected land (660 hectares) was then expropriated in an urgent procedure in order to prevent building or further agricultural use. In October 2006, the Spanish and US governments agreed to completely decontaminate the affected area. The costs for this are to be shared between the two countries. However, it is still unclear how great the extent of the pollution is and how the decontamination can be carried out successfully. In October 2006, significantly increased radioactivity was found in snails near the place, whereupon further dangerous amounts of plutonium and americium were suspected in the soil. Contaminated plankton was also found in the sea. In December 2009, WikiLeaks published cables from US embassies that the then Spanish Secretary of State Miguel Ángel Moratinos had informed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the publication of the study on current radioactive contamination could lead to a public health risk Opinion in Spain against the USA.

The US ended its participation in the ongoing costs of the contamination with the final payment on September 7, 2009. The European Parliament also considered the matter.

In October 2015, Spain and the USA agreed that the contaminated soil (around 50,000 cubic meters) that was left in Spain during cleaning work should be shipped to the USA and disposed of there. In November 2018, however, the daily El Pais reported that following a parliamentary question on the matter, the Spanish government announced that the new Trump administration does not feel bound by the agreement concluded under the administration of Barack Obama .

literature

  • Tad Szulc: The Bombs of Palomares . The Viking Press, New York 1967, OCLC 432909253 .
  • Fred Geher, Fred Helbig: The death of Palomares (=  facts . Volume 150 ). Military publishing house of the GDR, Berlin 1974.
  • Barbara Moran: The day we lost the H-bomb: Cold War, hot nukes, and the worst nuclear weapons disaster in history . Presidio Press / Ballantine Books, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-89141-904-4 .

Web links

Commons : Palomares nuclear disaster  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ n-tv.de
  2. ↑ Nuclear disasters: defective technology, deadly cargo . Spiegel Online , photo gallery
  3. ↑ tagesspiegel.de
  4. ↑ brookings.edu ; Broken Arrows: The Palomares and Thule Accidents Brookings Institution , accessed May 1, 2012
  5. ↑ Palomares Incident, January 17, 1966 Time , accessed May 1, 2012
  6. ↑ brookings.edu ; Savannah River Site
  7. ^ Forgotten: The most radioactive town in Europe independent.co.uk, accessed May 2, 2012
  8. ↑ Palomares bombs: Spain waits for US to finish nuclear clean-up bbc.co.uk, accessed November 5, 2012
  9. ↑ When four US bombs radioactively contaminated Palomares, welt.de, accessed on May 2, 2012
  10. ^ JA Sanchez-Cabeza, J. Merino, P. Masqué, PI Mitchell, LL Vintró, WR Schell, L. Cross, A. Calbet: Concentrations of plutonium and americium in plankton from the western Mediterranean Sea. In: The Science of the Total Environment. Volume 311, Number 1-3, July 2003, pp. 233-245, doi: 10.1016 / S0048-9697 (03) 00053-6 , PMID 12826395 .
  11. ↑ Secretary Clinton'December 14, 2009 conversation with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos. United States Department of State, December 18, 2009, accessed December 18, 2010 .
  12. ↑ Spain demands US clears earth from site of 1966 nuclear bomb mishap guardian.co.uk
  13. ↑ USA no longer pays for nuclear accident. Retrieved September 2, 2010 .
  14. ↑ Subject: Decontamination of Palomares and WikiLeaks europarl.europa.eu; Retrieved May 2, 2012
  15. ^ Thilo Schäfer: From Andalusia to Nevada. In: Mallorca Zeitung , No. 806, October 15, 2015, p. 14.
  16. ↑ Palomares nuclear crash: US agrees Spanish coast clean-up . BBC News, Oct. 19, 2015
  17. ↑ Miguel González: Trump no quiere llevarse la tierra radiactiva de Palomares . In: El País . November 7, 2018, ISSN  1134-6582 ( elpais.com [accessed November 7, 2018]).

Coordinates: 37 ° 14 '58.9 "  N , 1 ° 47' 55.3"  W.