There’s been an ever increasing number of reports about mysterious radioactive spikes observed across Europe. However, no official announcement has been made by any of the EU states, as officials are trying to downplay these reports as if they were mere allegations.
As it’s been noted by the Independent, Iodine-131 is a man-made radioactive material that is being found in small amounts across the continent. It was found in northern Norway early in January, but has been gradually moving across the rest of Europe ever since.
This radionuclide is among the main elements produced during nuclear fission, when uranium or plutonium is used as a fuel. High concentration levels of this radioisotope of iodine have been registered during nuclear tests and after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
According to Superstation95, lately the concentration of Iodine-131 in the air over Nordic countries has been 4 times higher than normal. Traces of this radionuclide were found in Finland, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, France and Spain. It’s been assumed that there was an accident at one of Europe’s nuclear plants or some state has been running rogue nuclear tests.
It should be noted that back in October 2016 the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) reported a Iodine-131 spike due to a technical system failure. But these days, however, the Norwegian authorities prefer to remain silent about possible causes.
However, according to the most recent trends in the reporting of geopolitical events, Western media has started blaming Russia for carry out some sort of illegal nuclear activity. Conspiracy theorists have pointed to the fact that the spread appeared to emanate from northern Norway, where «Russia may have run a secret nuclear test».
Immediately after that, a WC-135 Constant Phoenix special purpose aircraft designed to collect samples from the atmosphere for the purpose of detecting and identifying nuclear explosions, arrived at the Mildenhall RAF station, while a number of US reconnaissance planes began patrolling a section of Russia’s border in the Barents Sea. The Pentagon has also deployed specialized planes to fly over Europe and establish where the contamination is coming from but they have mostly failed. Experts say that changing winds mean that it is not possible to isolate the source, so they can only speculate that Iodine-131 was most likely released somewhere near eastern Europe.
No matter how sad it is for the Russophobe crowd that they didn’t have a chance to blame Moscow for contaminating Europe with radioactive substances, we are still trying to establish the possible source of contamination.
During the Cold War days the United States lost more than a dozen nuclear warheads, and only a number of those remain in relatively deserted areas. The US Department of Defense has declassified a list of serious accidents with nuclear weapons back in 1968, in which there were 13 cases involving nuclear weapons in the period from 1950 to 1968. The updated list was declassified in 1980, where there were 32 cases listed. At the same time, the same paper released by the US Navy in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, listed 381 accidents involving nuclear weapons in the United States in a period between 1965 and 1977. A number of nuclear devices were lost during sea tests and now they must have begun to corrode, resulting in the leakage of radioactive material into the environment. It is worth noting that the power of any individual, “lost device” is a 1000 times more destructive than that which reduced the city of Hiroshima to ashes.
For instance, in January 1966 the so called Palomares incident occurred. It was named after a small Spanish village over which a US Army B-52G bomber collided with a KC-135 tanker at an altitude of 30,000 feet. The two planes were instantly transformed into a roaring ball of fire, with the B-52 having four hydrogen bombs on board. For some reason, one of them landed undamaged in a field near the village. Non-nuclear fuse explosions detonated two more, resulting in a plutonium dust cloud covering the area around the crash site. According to official data, the accident resulted in the radioactive contamination of almost 600 acres of soil, a part of which was used for farming. The remaining bombs landed somewhere near the coast, but its location remains unknown to this day. In the fall of 2006, Spain and the United States signed an agreement on the cleanup of the area around the village.
On January 21, 1968, yet another B-52 bomber crashed near the US North Star Bay base in Greenland. The aircraft was also carrying four atomic bombs. The aircraft smashed through the ice and sank. Officially, the US government stated that all atomic bombs were recovered from the seabed. However, they only managed to find three bombs, while the fourth was never recovered. This has been exposed by a declassified US government video, which was obtained by the BBC.
The Berlin Information Center for Transatlantic Security’s Otfried Nassauer, has once stated that even officially the United States Department of Defense, “admitted the loss of 11 atomic bombs.” Recently, a Canadian diver found an object resembling a nuclear device off the Pacific coast that could have been lost back in the 1950s, notes The Guardian.
But the “lost nuclear bombs” are not the only remnants that the Cold War left behind. In November 2016, Greenland has raised the question about the removal of all US facilities from its territory, calling them “American garbage.” At the same time at one of the facilities – an abandoned missile site that hasn’t been finished – has 50 thousand gallons of radioactive waste. These radioactive substances remain lying in the ice and it’s only a matter of time before they start contaminating the air and sea flows all heading toward Europe.
So, European conspiracy theorists and individual politicians would be better off paying more attention to the “nuclear gifts from the past” from the United States, and demanding Washington to take responsibility, rather than blaming it all on their favorite boogeyman – Russia .
Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”