Madrid (AP) – Spain said Monday it has asked the United States to begin removing radioactive soil after a mid-air collision dropped four American hydrogen bombs near a village in southern Spain nearly 60 years ago.
None of the bombs had exploded, but plutonium-filled detonators detonated two of them, spreading several kilograms (pounds) of highly radioactive plutonium-239 across the landscape around Palomares.
The Foreign Office said no further details about the petition would be provided until there was an official response from the United States.
Spain and the United States signed a letter of intent in 2015 to negotiate a binding agreement for the remediation and subsequent rehabilitation of the Palomares site and to arrange for disposal of the contaminated soil at a suitable site in the United States. But for various reasons no agreement was ever signed. .
via the Associated Press
The bombs fell on January 17, 1966, when an American B-52 bomber and a refueling plane crashed into each other, killing seven of the 11 crew. There were no casualties on the ground.
The crash occurred during the height of the Cold War, when US policy was to keep nuclear-armed warplanes constantly in the air near the Soviet border.
The 2015 statement said that shortly after the incident, both countries began securing the area, removing contaminated soil and decontaminating the land.
He said they have since been monitoring and analyzing contamination levels.
Spain’s state news agency EFE said about 50,000 cubic meters (1.76 million cubic feet) of land on 44 parcels were affected.
The government has since leased the land from its owners to protect it and now hopes to expropriate it.
Spanish newspaper El País, which published the article on the petition on Monday, said the request was made several months ago and the US reaction so far has been positive.
The paper said Spain was pushing for a quick deal as the country held general elections in December.
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