Europe site of several nuke accidents during Cold War

Europe site of several nuke accidents during Cold War
Stars and Stripes
Europe edition, Wednesday, November 7, 2007

The U.S. government has paid approximately $3 million over the past 10 years to fund research into radioactive contamination of a Spanish village following a deadly 1966 U.S. nuclear weapons accident.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently extended the funding for two years. A plan to address the issue was established in 1997 after Spanish officials discovered a year earlier that 558 acres around the village of Palomares had radioactive contamination five times worse than initially estimated, according to Jonathan Shrader, a department spokesman.

The Palomares nuclear incident is one of the most high-profile accidents involving American nuclear weapons outside the U.S., according to nuclear weapons experts.

After spending about $100 million in the initial decontamination, the U.S. government is still working with Spanish officials to determine if the land contaminated with plutonium is suitable for development.

Following a nuclear weapons mishandling incident at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., in August, The Associated Press quoted Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Newton as saying, “Nothing like this has ever occurred.”

But the military has a far-from-spotless record in terms of nuclear weapons safety, according to Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project with the Federation of American Scientists.


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=50096