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This Concrete Dome Holds A Leaking Toxic Timebomb | Foreign Correspondent

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Bikini - The Sunken Nuclear Fleet

St Albans Sub-Aqua Club visits Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific, the site of the atomic bomb tests in the 40's and 50's. Many large warships were anchored nearby, to find out how they would react to a nuclear blast, and these now lie on the seabed a a depth of 54m (178 ft)
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Massive nuclear test triggers fallout fears across the Pacific March 1, 1954

Massive nuclear test triggers fallout fears across the Pacific March 1, 1954
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On this day in 1954, the United States conducted its largest ever nuclear weapon test, code-named Castle Bravo, at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
On this day in 1954, the US military exploded a huge hydrogen bomb near Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean, causing the biggest ever man-made explosion to date.

The detonation of the device - nicknamed ‘Shrimp’ - took place at 06:45 local time, and delivered a blast of 15 megatons. This was much greater than expected, and over 1,000 times the force of the atomic bombs that had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

The explosion formed a fireball almost four and a half miles across, visible from 250 miles away, and left a crater 6,500 feet in diameter and 250 feet deep. The following mushroom cloud spread over 62 miles and rose to a height of 130,000 feet within ten minutes.

The violence of the blast overwhelmed instruments set to measure it. It had been expected to deliver just 6 megatons of force – this combined with high winds led to the greatest-ever accidental release of radiation by the US.

The radioactive fall-out spread to nearby small islands Rongerik, Rongelap and Utirik. Marshall Islands senator Jeton Anjain would later recall what he witnessed that day.

Approximately five hours after detonation, it began to rain radioactive fallout at Rongelap, he said. Within hours, the atoll was covered with a fine, white, powdered-like substance. No one knew it was radioactive fallout. The children played in the snow. They ate it.

Bikini islanders that had been moved to neighbouring islands had to be relocated again 48 hours after the blast due to contamination.

Three weeks later it emerged that a Japanese fishing boat, named Lucky Dragon no. 5, was within 80 miles of the test zone at the time of the detonation. Its 23 crew were severely affected by radiation sickness, one of them dying of a secondary infection.

Oishi Matashichi, one of fisherman aboard the luckless vessel, recalled seeing a yellow flash through a porthole.

Wondering what had happened, I jumped up from the bunk near the door, ran out on deck, and was astonished, he said. Bridge, sky and sea burst into view, painted in flaming sunset colors. I looked around in a daze. I was totally at a loss.

The result was that what had started as a secret test became an international incident, prompting widespread calls for the cancellation of all atmospheric thermonuclear testing.
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Marshall Islands - Glimpses of Bikini Atoll

Scenes and views of the island during my visit in December 2011. Includes dives on 2 wrecks from the atomic testing in the 50's.
Look on for more about cruising details.
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H bomb lost in Spain January 17 1966 This Day in History

H bomb lost in Spain January 17 1966 This Day in History

On this day, a B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 jet tanker over Spain’s Mediterranean coast, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares and one in the sea. It was not the first or last accident involving American nuclear bombs.

As a means of maintaining first-strike capability during the Cold War, U.S. bombers laden with nuclear weapons circled the earth ceaselessly for decades. In a military operation of this magnitude, it was inevitable that accidents would occur. The Pentagon admits to more than three-dozen accidents in which bombers either crashed or caught fire on the runway, resulting in nuclear contamination from a damaged or destroyed bomb and/or the loss of a nuclear weapon. One of the only “Broken Arrows” to receive widespread publicity occurred on January 17, 1966, when a B-52 bomber crashed into a KC-135 jet tanker over Spain.

The bomber was returning to its North Carolina base following a routine airborne alert mission along the southern route of the Strategic Air Command when it attempted to refuel with a jet tanker. The B-52 collided with the fueling boom of the tanker, ripping the bomber open and igniting the fuel. The KC-135 exploded, killing all four of its crew members, but four members of the seven-man B-52 crew managed to parachute to safety. None of the bombs were armed, but explosive material in two of the bombs that fell to earth exploded upon impact, forming craters and scattering radioactive plutonium over the fields of Palomares. A third bomb landed in a dry riverbed and was recovered relatively intact. The fourth bomb fell into the sea at an unknown location.

Palomares, a remote fishing and farming community, was soon filled with nearly 2,000 U.S. military personnel and Spanish civil guards who rushed to clean up the debris and decontaminate the area. The U.S. personnel took precautions to prevent overexposure to the radiation, but the Spanish workers, who lived in a country that lacked experience with nuclear technology, did not. Eventually some 1,400 tons of radioactive soil and vegetation were shipped to the United States for disposal.

Meanwhile, at sea, 33 U.S. Navy vessels were involved in the search for the lost hydrogen bomb. Using an IBM computer, experts tried to calculate where the bomb might have landed, but the impact area was still too large for an effective search. Finally, an eyewitness account by a Spanish fisherman led the investigators to a one-mile area. On March 15, a submarine spotted the bomb, and on April 7 it was recovered. It was damaged but intact.

Studies on the effects of the nuclear accident on the people of Palomares were limited, but the United States eventually settled some 500 claims by residents whose health was adversely affected. Because the accident happened in a foreign country, it received far more publicity than did the dozen or so similar crashes that occurred within U.S. borders. As a security measure, U.S. authorities do not announce nuclear weapons accidents, and some American citizens may have unknowingly been exposed to radiation that resulted from aircraft crashes and emergency bomb jettisons. Today, two hydrogen bombs and a uranium core lie in yet undetermined locations in the Wassaw Sound off Georgia, in the Puget Sound off Washington, and in swamplands near Goldsboro, North Carolina.
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some underground stuff

Greenland From Above | Foreign Correspondent

We shot so much amazing footage while in Greenland we couldn't include it all in our episode. So here, for your viewing pleasure is a compile of all the best shots we got from our time in Greenland.

On Top of the World full episode: youtu.be/AV2DvfWKyC0

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Operation Crossroads Underwater Atomic Bomb Test At Bikini Atoll (1946)

Operation Crossroads was a series of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946. It was the first test of a nuclear weapon after the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945, and the first detonation of any nuclear device following the Fat Man detonation on August 9, 1945. Its purpose was to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on naval ships.

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