Good news for Palomares

THERE was quiet optimism in Palomares on learning that John Kerry will be joining Joe Biden’s government.
This time around he will be the presidential Climate Envoy and a member of the National Security Council, all of which bodes well for Palomares’ chances that the US will finally clear the area of nuclear residue.
In 2015, when Kerry was Barack Ombama’s Secretary of State, he visited Spain and signed an agreement with the then-Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo to clean two square kilometres of Palomares land.
This was contaminated with plutonium 239 in 1966 following the B-52G air disaster but the Kerry-Margallo agreement was conveniently overlooked by the Trump administration.
Both politicians agreed to rehabilitate the area while the contaminated soil would be transported to an unspecified location in the US.
Radiation affected 50,000 cubic metres of soil over a 40-hectare area that is currently fenced off, although the US initially agreed to remove only 6,000 cubic metres of earth.
Investigator Jose Herrera, quoted in the local Spanish media, believes that there is a kilo of plutonium in the subsoil.
But he also suggested that Kerry could finally solve a problem that is still waiting for a definitive solution more than 50 years later.

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