From the 1968 crash to the controversial “Crested Ice” cleanup, the untold story of the military failure that poisoned the Thule district.
“On Sunday, January 21, 1968, at around 9 a.m. local time, the Boeing B-52G bomber known as HOBO 28 took off from Platsburgh Air Force Base (New York State) for Mission Junky 14 over the Arctic Circle, Greenland and the US Thule Air Base”. According to a statement from the non-governmental organization Association Robin des Bois.
“The round trip was expected to last between 21 and 24 hours without interruption, thanks to in-flight fuel transfers. It never returned. At take-off, there were 7 men on board and 4 B28FI thermonuclear bombs, each equivalent to 1.1 million tonnes of TNT, defused but ready to be activated if necessary. It was the Cold War and in Thule, in the middle of winter, the temperature was -30°C“.
“At 3:22 p.m. local time, 140 km from the US base at Thule, Commander John Haug (or Haig, depending on the source) reported a fire on board and requested permission to make an emergency landing on one of Thule’s two runways. Five minutes later, the flying fortress was no longer controllable. The cockpit was filled with smoke. Haug gave up the landing attempt and ordered the crew to evacuate using ejector seats. At 3:39 p.m., HOBO 28 crashed at 1,100 km/h into the frozen sea 12 km southwest of Thule with 90,000 litres of kerosene on board. For 6 hours, the fire lit up the polar night. The bombs disintegrated, the primary detonators imploded, and several kilograms of plutonium and tritium were scattered across Wolstenholme Fjord and Saunders Island. At the “black spot”, the epicentre of the crash (approximately 2,000 m²), the ice melted and around, it cracked. Six crew members were rescued and one lost his life”.
“On March 15, the Americans and Danes declared that the project Crested Ice clean-up operation had been completed. Such a short cycle for washing a land and sea polluted by artificial radioactivity and leaded kerosene will remain unique in the annals of humanity. The long cycle of pathologies triggered by the inhalation of radioactive aerosols and contact with debris has been swept away. When, in the summer, after the ice had melted, two American cargo ships came to load the drums and other containers holding irradiated plywood, tyres, clothing, tools, and the 67 tanks containing around 6,000 tonnes of radioactive snow, the matter was considered virtuous and closed. This was evidenced by the pose struck by the commander of Thule Air Base and the Danish liaison officer before the boarding of the last tank, marked with a triumphant and definitive ‘That’s all folks!’“.
“In 1968, the Thule district was inhabited by 538 Inuit. The Inuit are hunters, not fishermen. They hunt seals, walruses, toothed whales and baleen whales, dolphins, killer whales, narwhals, arctic foxes and hares, polar bears and seabirds, whose eggs they also collect. The Inuit diet requires contact with the pelts, feathers and skins of wildlife exposed to plutonium dust and leads to the ingestion of contaminated meat”.
“Samples taken by Danish experts (Danish Atomic Energy Commission) in August 1968, seven months after the disaster, detected levels of plutonium-239 in fresh shellfish and bivalves 1,000 times higher than the background levels from the fallout of the around 500 atmospheric nuclear tests carried out by the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and China since 1945. The average plutonium content in fresh bivalves near the crash site is 8,000 picocuries/kg, or 296 Bq/kg. By way of comparison, on the French coast of the English Channel, concentrations in fresh bivalves are less than 0.2 Bq/kg. Danish experts also detected levels of 30,000 picocuries/kg (fresh weight) of plutonium-239, or 1,110 Bq/kg, in bottom sea worms”.
“Plutonium-239 is carcinogenic. The majority of the scientific community, especially those involved in the military and civil nuclear industries, consider that ingesting plutonium is less dangerous than inhaling it and having skin contact. However, no analysis of the plutonium particles released by the fire and carried away by the wind, sea spray and snowstorms was carried out in the days, weeks or years following the accident”.
“In the preamble to his final report on Project Crested Ice, Major General Richard Overton Hunziker, the officer appointed by SAC (Strategic Air Command), made a statement that was unusual in military language: ‘For one given to philosophical contemplation, the contrast between a sophisticated nuclear age and the basic survival methods of the Greenlanders gave pause for thought. It was ironic that one of man’s most technically complex endeavors had gone astray and that recovery from its effects must depend upon the most primitive of methods'”.
“Several dozen Inuit participated in the clean-up operations with their skill in building igloo shelters for American soldiers working on the ‘black spot’ or around and with their dog sleds”.