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posted by CoolHand on Friday April 17 2015, @11:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the glowing-maritime-adventures dept.

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."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday April 18 2015, @08:38AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday April 18 2015, @08:38AM (#172336) Journal

    Of course, we knew it was hot when we scuttled it. However, the irony of scuttling the USS Independence only slightly escapes me. The shipyard it was sent to, before being scuttled, is still hot as well! We have recently had some posts on the "abandoned sites" thing. This is one where you want to bring geiger counter or wear a dosimeter, whether you are walking around the shipyard or diving on the wreck. Greatest Generation was kind of stupid, when it came to glowing in the dark and better living through chemistry. Not their fault, they were stupid. and drafted.

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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:16AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Saturday April 18 2015, @10:16AM (#172343) Journal

    Ah, you mean the reckless generation? ;-)
    Everything new must be good! :D

    When one doesn't know. One has to find out before acting. Assumption is the mother of many fuckups.

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday April 18 2015, @11:25AM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Saturday April 18 2015, @11:25AM (#172359) Homepage
    Hey, you're forgetting our friend the atom!
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves