Thule Air Base, North-West Greenland
Thule Air Base is the U.S. Armed Forces' northernmost installation, surrounded by arctic environment offering spectacular scenery,including majestic icebergs in the North Star Bay. On January 21, 1968, a US military plane with nuclear weapons crashed and burned on the ice near Thule Air Base. The impact detonated the high explosives in the primary units of all four of the B28 nuclear bombs it carried, but nuclear and thermonuclear reactions did not take place due to the PAL and fail-safe mechanisms in the weapons. More than 700 Danish civilians and U.S. military personnel worked under hazardous conditions without protective gear to clean up the nuclear waste.In 1987, nearly 200 of the Danish workers unsuccessfully attempted to sue the United States. However, some information has been released by the U.S. authorities under the Freedom of Information Act. Kaare Ulbak, chief consultant to the Danish National Institute of Radiation Hygiene, said Denmark had carefully studied the health of the Thule workers and found no evidence of increased mortality or cancer.
Year: 2013
From album: Greenland Arctic Desert and Northernmost Land in the World
Photographer: Peter Prokosch