World News | Spain asks US to start cleaning up nuclear accident site

MADRID, March 6 (AP) Spain said Monday that it has asked the United States to begin clearing radioactive weapons after a mid-air collision dumped four U.S. hydrogen bombs near a village in southern Spain nearly 60 years ago. Contaminated soil procedure.

None of the bombs exploded, but two of the plutonium-laden detonators exploded, scattering several kilograms (pounds) of highly radioactive plutonium-239 over the land around Palomares.

Read also | Despite the sluggish economy, China is still prioritizing its defense budget.

The foreign ministry said it would not provide further details on the petition until it received a formal reply from the US

Spain and the United States signed a statement of intent in 2015 to negotiate a binding agreement to further restore and clean up the Palomares site and arrange for the disposal of the contaminated soil at an appropriate site in the United States, but due to For various reasons, no agreement was signed.

Read also | Russia steps up efforts to capture the elusive Ukrainian city prize.

The bomb fell on January 17, 1966, when a US B-52 bomber and a tanker collided, killing seven of the 11 crew members. There were no casualties on the ground.

The accident occurred during the height of the Cold War, when U.S. policy kept nuclear-armed warplanes in the air close to the Soviet border.

The 2015 statement said that immediately after the accident, the two countries worked to protect the area, remove contaminated soil and decontaminate the land. It said they had since been monitoring and analyzing pollution levels.

About 50,000 cubic meters (1.76 million cubic feet) of land on 44 plots were affected, Spanish state news agency EFE said.

The government has since leased the land from its owners to preserve it and now wants to expropriate it.

Spain’s leading daily El País published its report on the petition on Monday, saying the request had been made months ago and that the U.S. response so far had been positive.

The newspaper said Spain was pushing for a deal as soon as possible, ahead of the country’s general elections in December. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)