nuclear-news

Duke replied with a laugh: “If this is radioactivity, I love it!” -BBC

October 22, 2012 12:00 pm

22 October 2012

Palomares bombs: Spain waits for US to finish nuclear clean-up

By Gerry HaddenPRI’s The World

Actually, just how much plutonium is still out there is hard to determine, because the US has never said how much the bombs were carrying to begin with. But Spanish investigator Carlos Sancho estimates that between 15 and 25 pounds (7 and 11kg) of the material ended up in the soil. Sancho, who runs the Palomares section of the Spanish Department of Energy, insists it does not pose health risks.

[…]”In the movie, they had all this really awesome underwater technology that got the bomb. But in real life, it was much harder to first locate, and then recover the bomb from the sea bed.”

“The earth there can’t be moved because the plutonium is latent in the soil,” he says. “If we disturb the soil the plutonium could be dispersed.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18689132