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Aaron Kinney writes in the San Jose Mercury News that scientists have captured the first clear images of the USS Independence, a radioactivity-polluted World War II aircraft carrier that rests on the ocean floor 30 miles off the coast of Half Moon Bay. The Independence saw combat at Wake Island and other decisive battles against Japan in 1944 and 1945 and was later blasted with radiation in two South Pacific nuclear tests. Assigned as a target vessel for the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests, she was placed within one-half-mile of ground zero and was engulfed in a fireball and heavily damaged during the 1946 nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. The veteran ship did not sink, however (though her funnels and island were crumpled by the blast), and after taking part in another explosion on 25 July, the highly radioactive hull was later taken to Pearl Harbor and San Francisco for further tests and was finally scuttled off the coast of San Francisco, California, on 29 January 1951. "This ship is an evocative artifact of the dawn of the atomic age, when we began to learn the nature of the genie we'd uncorked from the bottle," says James Delgado. "It speaks to the 'Greatest Generation' -- people's fathers, grandfathers, uncles and brothers who served on these ships, who flew off those decks and what they did to turn the tide in the Pacific war."
Delgado says he doesn't know how many drums of radioactive material are buried within the ship -- perhaps a few hundred. But he is doubtful that they pose any health or environmental risk. The barrels were filled with concrete and sealed in the ship's engine and boiler rooms, which were protected by thick walls of steel. The carrier itself was clearly "hot" when it went down and and it was packed full of fresh fission products and other radiological waste at the time it sank. The Independence was scuttled in what is now the Gulf of the Farallones sanctuary, a haven for wildlife, from white sharks to elephant seals and whales. Despite its history as a dumping ground Richard Charter says the radioactive waste is a relic of a dark age before the environmental movement took hold. "It's just one of those things that humans rather stupidly did in the past that we can't retroactively fix."
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 18 2015, @01:32AM
So should the aircraft carrier be taken up and be chopped or melted and sent to Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository?
I suspect those nuclear subs and nukes that various countries has left to rust on the bottom of the sea presents a larger danger to the environment. If Kursk could be retrieved these other seafloor objects shouldn't be a big problem?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Reziac on Saturday April 18 2015, @02:38AM
My thought was that more often than not you're as well to leave shit alone rather than trying to move it, since chopping it into manageable pieces is far more likely to release ungoodies than is just leaving it to be covered with ocean debris.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday April 18 2015, @11:22AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by deadstick on Saturday April 18 2015, @02:05PM
First, it's impossible to scuttle a ship on a beach. Scuttling means deliberately sinking; those ships are beached.
Second, you're probably referring to the ship-breakers' yards in India or Bangladesh. Those ships aren't "dumped": they've been sold to a ship breaker and delivered to a beach where thousands of poverty-wage workers take them apart under appallingly toxic and dangerous conditions...the steel eventually winds up in new ships.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday April 18 2015, @02:09PM
They should raise the Independence and properly dispose of her and the radioactive waste. Obviously, this is also an appallingly toxic and dangerous job, which is why I volunteer the US Congress for the job. Let's throw the Supreme Court justices in there too, since they also haven't done any decent work in a long time.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday April 19 2015, @09:45AM
thousands of poverty-wage workers ... under appallingly toxic and dangerous conditions
WTF have working conditions in India got to do with this topic?
the steel eventually winds up in new ships
More likely your next car.