The Nuke Fluke

Washington held off any announcement, waiting for Spain to make the first statement. Spain held off, nervously uncertain of what to say. Finally, last week--some 44 days after the event--the two countries officially announced what the whole world had been discussing for the past six weeks: that the U.S. had indeed misplaced one H-bomb.

The nuke was one of four that fell over southern Spain Jan. 17, when a U.S. Air Force B-52 collided with a refueling tanker. The first three bombs --and four crew members--were quickly recovered. The fourth bomb was still missing. Though the bombs were unarmed and protected by radiation-proof shields, the U.S. was understandably anxious to get them all back. To that end, seven hundred U.S. airmen, soldiers, civilian technicians and Spanish troops were scouring a ten-sq.-mi. coastal area near Palomares, and 16 ships--including three deep-sea subs--were combing the ocean floor. All they turned up were 200 chunks of metal, ranging from one of the aircraft's latrines to an old man-o'-war cannon ball.

In Madrid and Washington, the two governments revealed that only one of the three recovered bombs had actually survived the fall intact. Some of the TNT detonators on the other two had exploded on impact and ruptured the shell casing, permitting some radioactive plutonium and uranium to scatter over 18 acres in the impact area. However, there was no cause for alarm, Spain's Nuclear Energy Board quickly assured. Of the 2,000 "potentially exposed" people in the area, 1,800 had been examined thus far, and none had received a dangerous dose. What is more, added the board, "there is not the slightest risk in eating meat, fish, vegetables from the zone, or of drinking milk from there." Just to be on the safe side, the U.S. dug up 1,500 cubic yards of contaminated topsoil and tomato plants and made plans to ship them back to a radioactive-waste dump in Aiken, S.C., for diplomatic burial.

As for the bomb that was still missing, the searchers seemed prepared to continue the hunt indefinitely. Was there a chance its radioactive contents were leaking into Spain's coastal waters? With Spain's big tourist season about to begin, it was a horrifying thought. U.S. Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke's duty was clear. To prove the safety of Spanish shores, he made a date with Spain's Information and Tourism Minister to take a chilly 59DEG F. Mediterranean dip this week--with their wives and children--in the water off Palomares.

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