PLUTONIUM CONTAMINATION AT THULE On January 21, 1968, a B-52 carrying 4 nuclear weapons crashed and burned on the ice near Thule, Greenland. and 6 survived. The 7 crew members bailed out before the crash At the time of the crash, the plane was carrying about 225,000 pounds of JP-4 jet fuel. The resultant fire produced a blackened area on the ice of about 500 feet wide by 2100 feet long. The ice was cracked for about 100 yards in all directions from the point of the impact. At the time of the crash, the temperature was -24°F and a 7 knot wind reduced this to an equivalent -53°F reading. It would be about 3 weeks yet until ‘the sun made its first appearance after the long Artic night. weeks, several storms swept the area. During the next few The combination of darkness, storms, severe cold, and the remote location would make recovery operations extremely difficult. Within a few days, members of the U.S. Air Force, scientific experts from LASL and Livermore, and Danish scientists were assembled at Thule to assess the accident situation. It quickly became clear that there was plutonium contamination around the crash site, but there was no evidenace of any nuclear yield. Also, it was determined that the ice at the crash site was 2 to 4 feet thick and sufficient to support vehicles and structures as long as adequate spacing was maintained.