United States will clean plutonium remains on the beach of Palomares

USPA NEWS - The Secretary of State of the United States, John Kerry, arrived Sunday in Spain on an official two-day visit within a tour that has also taken him to Milan and Paris. The chief US diplomat signed an agreement on nuclear cleaning the Spanish beach of Palomares.

The January 17, 1966, a B-52 of the USAF had an accident while flying over the coast of Almeria, in southern Spain, collided in flight with a KC-135 tanker aircraft loaded with 110,000 liters of fuel. As a result, the four crew members of the KC-135 and three B-52 were killed. The bomber carrying four thermonuclear bombs B28RI model of 1.5 megatons each, of which two were intact and one remained sunk in Mediterranean waters for 80 days. Palomares entire area was contaminated with plutonium and an estimated 15% percent of the total containing the bombs, about 3 kilos, it was irretrievable.

The recovery pumps and cleaning the area, some 226 hectares of scrubland, farming areas and urban land, cost the United States about 80 million dollars of the time. Although carried out the cleaning of the area, whose iconic image provided the then Minister of Information and Tourism of the Government of General Franco, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, bathing in the waters of Mediterranean sea in the area, the floor of Palomares still contains plutonium. With the agreement signed Monday, US will assume the cost of a new cleaning and decontamination of the área.

The visit to Spain's Secretary of State of the United States, the first by John Kerry in this country and was scheduled for May 31, when it was suspended due to bicycle accident suffered by the chief US diplomat in Switzerland, main objective is the signing of the agreement by which the United States will take over the cleaning and decontamination of the land of Palomares, and exchange of information on jihadist terrorism, wars of Syria and Iraq, the new Israeli-Palestinian conflict and migratory flows. All spoke of Kerry and his Spanish counterpart, Foreign Minister, Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, during the meeting on Sunday. The Secretary of State met Monday with Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, and was received by King Philip VI.

During his mini-European tour, Kerry has addressed political and environmental issues. In Milan, on Saturday, he demanded an "ambitious" climate agreement for the Paris Summit to be held in December. Secretary of State of the United States warned that the latest weather trends call for action immediately and in a coordinated manner because, as noted, 19 of the warmest 20 years of the last century have been recorded in the last two decades. In connection with that, Kerry warned that climate change is the greatest threat to global food security.

On Sunday morning in Paris before traveling to Spain, John Kerry gave a speech to the delegates and ambassadors in UNESCO, to those who defended the renewal of the mandate of the United States in the Executive Board of UNESCO, although US has since 2011 without paying their dues as a result of the admission of Palestine as a member state of the organization. In return, Kerry promised to work to reverse the current US default.