The US has not yet Decided What to do with the Contaminated Soils from Palomares

The current U.S. administration is due to receive an elaborate report from several departments before deciding what to do with the plutonium-contaminated soils that remain in Palomares, Almeria, where four nuclear bombs fell after two of the U.S. Air Force’s planes collided in mid-air in 1966. This is what the Spanish government said in a recent parliamentary response to a deputy of the Spanish Socialist Working Party (PSOE), Alex Sáez, to which Europa Press gained access.

Government sources have informed Europa Press that although the contamination in Palomares is one of the few contentions that Spain maintains with the United States, President Mariano Rajoy’s team has no intention, in principle, of putting the issue on the table during his visit to the White House this coming Jan. 13.

Nearly two years after the then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised to her Spanish colleague José Manuel García-Margollo that “soon” there would be good news regarding the Spanish request that the U.S. clean up the area, the executive Mariano Rajoy acknowledged that the United States’ “political situation” – with presidential elections between that time and now – had “paralyzed” the process.

“The United States’ electoral dynamics – with presidential and legislative elections in November 2012 – and Mrs. Clinton’s decision to not continue in office complicated the making of a final decision by the United States administration,” the Spanish government said as justification.

Following the elections, “new leaders began to be appointed and new alliances were formed in different U.S. departments with competence on this matter (State, Defense, Energy, and National Security Council),” a process that has also been “dragged out on various occasions by the delay in the Senate to make various key ministerial appointments for the resolution of this topic,” continued the executive.

“An inter-agency team composed of the aforementioned departments is responsible for preparing a report about which the United States administration will have to make the final decision. The political situation described above has paralyzed this group for months,” said the Spanish Government.

Spain Insists

During this time, however, the government says they have continued planting this question “at all competent levels in Washington, with the goal of advancing the laborious process of inter-agency coordination.”

The most recent occasion on which Spain again brought this topic to light was this past November when U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz visited Madrid. He was urged to “continue promoting the search for a solution to the issue, as the one in charge of the U.S. government centers for the storage of radioactive material,” says Rajoy’s executive.

Asked about Palomares in an interview with the press, Moniz appeared to be familiar with what happened, but he made it understood that his department has not taken a position on the matter. “I will be able to know more details about the situation and understand better how this issue is going upon returning to the U.S.,”* he said after recalling his experience with his department regarding the technical management of nuclear waste.

The U.S. fears that if it takes the contaminated soils from Palomares – about 40 acres – a precedent will be set and similar requests from other countries will be made. However, Palomares is a unique case in the sense that the bombs that fell – which did not explode, although two fragmented and burned, releasing plutonium – did so over an inhabited population. The bombs did not fall in the desert or offshore where the U.S. carries out military practice.

The truth is that the U.S. would also have a problem concerning public opinion in the United States if they were to eventually decide to bury contaminated soils in the U.S. This is because citizens are reluctant to accept more radioactive waste.

*Editor’s Note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.