The Day We Lost the H-Bomb
Page 25
“Project Indalo” and put Emilio Iranzo, the JEN scientist, in charge. (The name “Indalo” comes from a petroglyph found in nearby caves, showing a stick figure of a man holding an arc over his head. Indalo is an omnipresent tourist symbol for Almería, visible on place mats, key chains, and shot glasses throughout the area.) From the beginning, the U.S. government has funded part of the program, though it refuses to say publicly how much it has contributed.
In 1966, JEN set up air monitors in and around the town and has regularly checked the contamination levels since then. It has also tested chickens, rabbits, tomatoes, and other crops. Every year, about 150 residents of Palomares travel to Madrid — all expenses paid — for complete physical examinations, including urine testing for plutonium. So far, at least 1,029 people have received more than 4,000 medical and dosimetric examinations. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, these tests show that about 5 percent of the people studied carry plutonium in their bodies. However, say the authorities, the increased plutonium causes no health risk. This is proven, they say, by the fact that the residents of Palomares have shown no increase in illnesses or deaths that might be caused by plutonium ingestion.
Unfortunately, neither CIEMAT — the successor to JEN — nor the DOE has made these medical results public. Villagers who visit Madrid for screenings are given detailed printouts listing their weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol but are never told anything about the plutonium that may or may not be in their bodies. Only one small study examining the villagers’ long-term cancer rates has been published. It found that the cancer rates in Palomares were no higher than those in another Spanish town with a similar population.
Nevertheless, the accident continues to haunt the village. In the late 1970s, a large irrigation pool was built next to the area where bomb number two fell and cracked open. This area, which also served as the staging ground for loading the contaminated soil into barrels, remains the most contaminated zone. The heavy digging for the pool resuspended some of the buried plutonium, spiking contamination levels. Iranzo, who still ran the program at the time, insists that the levels, even at their highest, remained safe for the villagers.
In 2002, because of development encroaching on this same area, CIEMAT purchased about twenty-three acres of contaminated land in order to restrict use. It forbade farmers to plant in the area and eventually enclosed it with a ten-foot-high chain-link fence. (“Now they put a fence around it!” said Dolores González, rolling her eyes.) Around the same time, DOE and CIEMAT created a new program to survey, once again, the contaminated areas around Palomares.
Between November 21, 2006, and February 22, 2007, CIEMAT technicians swept 71 million square feet of land — the equivalent of 660 soccer fields — in and around Palomares with radiation meters, collecting 63,000 measurements. The preliminary results, released in the summer of 2007, surprised the scientists. The plutonium contamination was higher and more widespread than they had suspected, and several areas they had considered clean were contaminated with americium, a product of plutonium disintegration. In April 2008, CIEMAT announced another surprise: the discovery of two trenches, about ten yards long and thirty yards wide, containing radioactive debris.
Little information on the trenches is available, though they appear to contain many “small radioactive metal objects” left by the Americans. Though the U.S. and Spanish governments had long known of the trenches’ existence, they had not known their exact location.
The scientists insist that the radiation levels, though higher than expected, are still safe for residents.
But as a result of the 2007 findings, they widened the “contaminated” zone from 107,000 square yards to almost 360,000. They have also restricted construction in and the sale of produce from the most contaminated areas. They have not yet established a plan for remediation.
The townspeople, who stand to gain or lose much from land use restrictions, are not happy with the increased attention. Manolo and Dolores González consider the new rules ridiculous. Manolo is not worried about the plutonium; after the accident, he says, he took a piece of the melted wreckage and used it for a paperweight, and he is healthy as a horse. “Everybody is healthy, no one is sick. The death rate in Palomares is below the national average,” said Manolo. Everyone just needs to be tranquilo.
Alvin and Aluminaut met, one final time, in 1969.
After Palomares, both subs received their share of good press, and John Craven predicted a boom in miniature submersibles. “Minisubs,” he told The Washington Post, “may some day be as common under the sea as planes streaking over it.” But, much as space colonies failed to flourish and astronauts never made it to Mars, this imagined world of minisubs and undersea habitats never emerged.
However, Alvin and Aluminaut both kept busy after Palomares, though their jobs were decidedly odd. In 1967 and 1968, Alvin dove along the continental slope for geology and biology studies and also surveyed the tops of seamounts for a new acoustic test range. By late 1968, it had completed 307 successful dives. Aluminaut, meanwhile, took scientists on expeditions, salvaged lost gear, made a film with Jacques Cousteau, and sampled outflow from a Miami sewage treatment plant.
Then, on October 16, 1968, a freak accident seemed to change the future of both subs. On that day, Alvin was preparing for a routine dive about ninety miles southeast of Nantucket. Its task was to dive near a deep-moored buoy to inspect the line holding it. During the launch, two cables securing Alvin’s bow snapped, and the sub plunged forward. As its nose dunked under water, water poured into the open hatch. A few seconds later, someone yelled that the ballast tanks had ruptured. Alvin’s three crewmen scrambled for the hatch and barely had time to escape before the sub went under. It sank in about sixty seconds.
Immediately, everyone on board Alvin’s mother ship, Lulu, began to throw objects overboard — scrap metal, aluminum lawn chairs, a fifty-five-gallon barrel — to mark the spot. Lulu and her escort ship, Gosnold, took bearings and swept the area with sonar, trying desperately to pinpoint the spot where Alvin had come to rest.
The ships left the area with a pretty good sense of where Alvin had landed. But because neither ship could photograph Alvin on the bottom, nobody knew if the sub had landed intact or broken to bits.
WHOI eventually persuaded the Navy to send the USNS Mizar to sweep the ocean floor for Alvin.
In June 1969, Mizar found and photographed Alvin. The little sub sat upright on the bottom, about 5,000 feet deep, slightly embedded in the soft mud. It was intact except for a broken aft propeller.
Alvin, fully flooded, was estimated to weigh about 8,800 pounds in water. WHOI wanted its sub back, but no object as big or heavy as Alvin had ever been recovered from such depths. The salvage operation would be difficult and costly, and the Navy wasn’t sure if it wanted to bother. When a team at the Office of Naval Research met to decide whether or not to salvage Alvin, the chief of naval research reportedly grumbled, “Leave that damn toy on the bottom of the ocean.” But eventually Alvin’s advocates persuaded the Navy to fund the recovery.
Salvage experts agreed that the best way to recover Alvin was to place a spring-loaded nine-foot toggle bar in its open hatch. The bar would then be hooked to a lift line, which Mizar could winch to the surface. Experts considered all the submersibles that could dive below five thousand feet and plant the toggle bar and then chose Aluminaut for the job. The assignment was a coup for the Aluminaut team. It got them a fat government contract and allowed them to rescue the sub that had upstaged them in Spain.
On August 27, 1969, Aluminaut submerged about three miles from Alvin and was guided to the sunken sub by Mizar. In addition to her crew, Aluminaut carried a Navy observer and Mac McCamis. Still part of the Alvin crew, Mac had helped design the toggle bar. Since he knew Alvin as well as anybody, he was a good man to have along.
The job proved difficult. Aluminaut, not especially maneuverable, faced a delicate job while fighting a steady current. Also, the toggle bar, which was
slightly buoyant, was difficult to handle. Bob Canary, the Aluminaut pilot, said that getting the bar into Alvin was like trying to thread a wet noodle into a soda bottle in a half-knot current. Time after time, Aluminaut carefully climbed the side of Alvin and its crew tried to maneuver the toggle into the open hatch. Time after time, they failed. Mac McCamis, watching from the wings, grew increasingly frustrated. He wanted to grab the controls and do the job himself. (Some Alvin veterans say he did just that, an account flatly denied by the Aluminaut crew) But finally Aluminaut managed to drop the toggle bar into Alvin’s hatch, trip the release, and back away.
The bar was connected to a twenty-five-foot length of line with a snap hook at its end. The Aluminaut grasped the snap hook in one of its claws, carried it to a ring at the end of the lift line, and snapped it in. Mizar raised Alvin and towed the crippled sub to a fishing ground off Martha’s Vineyard, where a crane lifted Alvin onto a barge. Alvin, it turned out, was in remarkably good condition. Scientists and engineers flushed and cleaned every system, replaced the broken parts, and, by 1971, had her back on the job.
But just as Alvin got back to work, government funding for deep-sea exploration dried to a trickle.
Aluminaut, despite its great success recovering Alvin, grew desperate for work, accepting projects that embarrassed the crew. The most famous, and perhaps the one for which Aluminaut is best remembered, was a television commercial for Simoniz Wax. Producers coated one side of a Ford Falcon with Simoniz, the other with Brand X, then tied the car to Aluminaut and submerged it under water. (“I don’t even like to think about it,” said one crew member.) But such exploits failed to cover Aluminaut’s operating costs, and in 1971 Reynolds canceled the Aluminaut program and put the sub into storage. It planned to put it back into the water when it would prove profitable. That day never came.
Alvin, on the other hand, managed to survive the lean years despite its saltwater dunking and went on to a long and prosperous career of scientific discovery. The sub is probably best known for exploring the wreck of the Titanic in 1986 and aiding the discovery of “black smokers,” hydrothermal vents off the Galápagos Islands teeming with bizarre marine life. Over the years, WHOI has replaced individual parts of the sub in piecemeal fashion. All that remains of the original Alvin is three metal plates circling the entry hatch. The sub will retire by 2015, after nearly fifty years of service.
Palomares was not the last major nuclear weapons accident.
On January 21, 1968, almost exactly two years after the accident over Palomares, a SAC B-52 on airborne alert was circling 33,000 feet above Thule Air Base, Greenland. At around 3:30 p.m., the copilot, feeling chilly, cranked the cabin heater up to maximum. Shortly afterward, when other crew members complained about the heat, the copilot started to turn it down. A few minutes later, one crew member smelled burning rubber. As the fumes grew stronger, the aircraft commander told the crew to put on oxygen masks. The crew searched the plane and discovered a small fire in the lower cabin. The navigator fought the fire with two extinguishers, but the flames grew out of control, filling the plane with dense smoke. The pilot reported the fire to the ground, requested an emergency landing at Thule Air Base, and began his descent. Soon afterward, the electrical power on the plane blinked out. The pilot gave the order to eject. Six of the crew members bailed out into the darkness and landed safely in the snow. The seventh was killed.
The pilotless B-52, carrying four Mark 28 hydrogen bombs, continued its descent. The plane glided over the air base, banked left, then crashed into the ice seven miles away. When it hit, the plane was flying more than five hundred miles per hour. The jet fuel on board exploded into a massive fireball, detonating the high explosive in all four hydrogen bombs and spreading radioactive debris over miles of ice. U.S. personnel took four months to clean up the contamination, eventually removing 237,000 cubic feet of ice, snow, and aircraft parts.
By the time of the Thule accident, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had concluded that airborne alert was not necessary for national security. In 1966, using the Palomares accident for leverage, McNamara had proposed canceling the program. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and SAC objected to McNamara’s plan. Eventually, the two sides compromised. In June 1966, President Johnson approved a curtailed program, allowing only four nuclear-armed bombers on airborne alert each day. It was one of these bombers that crashed in Greenland.
After the Thule accident, McNamara had had enough. He ordered SAC to stop carrying nuclear weapons on airborne alert. Within a day, the weapons had been removed. SAC continued to fly the missions with unarmed bombers, buying time as it continued to lobby for airborne alert. Its arguments, however, failed to persuade civilian authorities, who were tired of cleaning up diplomatic messes left by SAC’s accidents. The program was canceled by the end of 1968.
The Strategic Air Command, the most powerful military force ever built, gradually diminished in power as the Navy and Army gained more nuclear weapons and the need for conventional weaponry increased. In 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. government closed down SAC, divvying up its resources among other commands. Even then, with the USSR disintegrated into fifteen separate countries, SAC veterans were shocked by the decision. In their view, SAC remained the key deterrent of nuclear war; it was impossible to imagine the world without it. One pilot said he couldn’t sleep for days, sure that the Russians were simply lying in wait to attack America the moment she let her guard down.
In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the Russian air force would begin regular long-range bomber patrols over the world’s oceans. The Russian bombers are capable of carrying nuclear weapons, but Putin did not say whether the flights would be armed. In August of that year, Russian bombers flew so near the American military base on Guam that the United States scrambled fighter jets to shadow them. The American fighters flew so close to the Russians that the pilots could see one another’s faces. According to Russian authorities, there was no altercation. The pilots smiled at one another and then went their separate ways.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing this book has been like building Mount Everest with pebbles. Since 2002, I have gathered tidbits of information here and there as the story slowly took shape and the main characters emerged from the fog. Along the way, I interviewed close to a hundred people, read countless documents, and spent innumerable hours in libraries and archives. I received valuable support and advice from many people, both military and civilian, and would like to acknowledge some key players here.
Several characters in the book were also invaluable in my research. Joe Ramirez and his wife, Sylvia, sat for hours of interviews, shared personal notes and photographs, and told me where to stay in Madrid. Mike Rooney, Charlie Wendorf, and Larry Messinger, the three pilots who survived the crash, shared their stories during several interviews. Brad Mooney gave me time, stories, and good humor. Red Moody sat for hours of interviews, shared his life story, answered endless questions and e-mails, and wouldn’t let me pay for lunch. Bill Barton answered countless questions over four years. Lewis Melson, one of the first people I interviewed, loaned me photos and personal letters.
Art Markel kindly took the time for a long interview and a tour of the Aluminaut, despite his advanced illness.
Within the Navy, Lieutenant Lesley Lykins and Lieutenant Commander Leslie Hull-Ryde helped arrange research trips. Lieutenant Mike Morley at Rota floored me with his organizational abilities.
Bobbi Petrillo at NAVSEA worked on my FOIA requests for years and sometimes sent informal notes with advice and encouragement. Ed Finney, Jr., was an enthusiastic and helpful photo archivist at the Naval Historical Center. Matt Staden, Gary Weir, and John Sherwood helped me find documents at the Naval Historical Center. Tom Lapuzza at SPAWAR illuminated the story of CURV.
Lieutenant Commander Brad Andros, Master Diver Ron Ervin, Commander Miguel Gutierrez, and the divers of EOD 6 allowed me to observe their training and learn what makes divers tick.
On the civilian side, Shelley Dawicki, Rosemary Davis, and Lisa Raymond helped me find documents at WHOI. Liz Caporelli, Bob Brown, and Bruce Strickrott, also at WHOI, arranged my visit to Alvin and took time to give me an extensive tour. Zach Elder at Duke University was a great help with the Angier Biddle Duke papers, and Myra O’Canna was a great help with photos. Becky Kenny, David Hoover, and Sam Bono at the National Atomic Museum helped with archives and interview space, and were very gracious during my two visits. David Hahn and Nancy Tait at the Science Museum of Virginia helped me uncover a treasure trove of Aluminaut documents in a dusty storeroom.
The staff of the LBJ Library, the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, and the MIT
Libraries were patient and knowledgeable. Randall Bergmann at DTIC tracked down the TF 65 final report. At Sandia and the NNSA, Terry Apodaca and Stefani Holinka helped push my FOIA requests through the system. Francis Smith shared stories of life on the Albany and the best brisket in Austin.
In Spain, Anouschka Orueta, my translator, gave me insights into her country. Her work went well beyond the call of duty. José Herrera Plaza generously opened his home and his files, gave me his time, and fed me well. And in Boston, the very patient Joe Federico tutored me in Spanish.
A number of scholars and historians took time to share their knowledge and research. Jerry Martin, the USSTRATCOM historian, gave insight on strategic bombing, the mighty hammer of SAC, and many other things. He kindly reviewed chapter 1 and offered comments. Scott Sagan of Stanford University shared research gathered for his book The Limits of Safety. Edwin Moïse of Clemson shared his knowledge and insights into the Tonkin Gulf incidents. Richard Rhodes offered leads and SAC stories. Andy Karam, a health physicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology, explained nuclear fusion and alpha radiation and generously reviewed certain technical sections of this book.