Posted on 09/18/2018 9:25:53 AM PDT by C19fan
The U.S. military is trying to recover the oil form a ship that's been underwater for 72 years. In an interesting twist, it's not even an American warship.
The United States captured the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen as a war prize after the end of World War II. The Prinz Eugen capsized in 1946 after being nuked—twice—during the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. For decades, experts have feared that the radioactive ship's oil might leak into the Pacific. Now the Pentagon is trying to do something about it.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
Ping.
Meh... we hot tap piping around here at least two to three times a year. Not a big deal unless you loose the button...
I can’t imagine how a little radioactive oil could contaminate the whole damn oceans of the world. I would think it would dissipate. In fact, there are some scientists who have said dumping our radioactive waste in the ocean is safe.
Handsome ship. I will say, I was generally not a fan of german aviation for the most part (FW-190 and ME-262 were good looking planes) but the Bismark and Prince Eugen were very nice looking naval vessels.
And capable. By all accounts, they had some of the best optical fire control systems out there (probably Zeiss...:)
” (The cruiser was fueled up for the tests in order to simulate the effects of an a-bomb on a fully loaded, combat-ready warship.)”
Why not use water?
[a little radioactive oil could contaminate the whole damn oceans of the world]
Miniscule compared to the radiation being leaked from JAPAN’S nuclear reactor.
I always thought the Admiral Hipper class of heavy cruiser, of which Eugen was part of, looked like Mini-Me version of the Bismarck.
In a location several miles deep, with no currents, in non-degradable containers, maybe. At a subduction zone, where it gets recycled into the underlying magma over millions of years.
Poop-ular mechanics had advertising on the site for Sony’s Aibo, a mechanical dog with some AI.
That was more interesting than the German ship story. Still, a $3,000 dog? I got my real dog for nothing, and it does a lot more than Aibo.
Sorry for the tangent... carry on.
Oil, NOT radiation.
Water won't tell you if the heat flash would have set the ship ablaze.
Well compared to the entire ocean, if it breaks apart, then the ocean will possibly dilute it all over the place. I do remember how the booklets for Civil Defense state that radioactive fallout from nuclear bombs decline rapidly over the course of days or even weeks. How much radioactive material got on the ship during the bomb test? If so, it seems likely that very little radioactivity from the bombs is left
perhaps its a cover story and there is some sort of property aged nuked oil has they want to study.
Actually, the Brits captured the Prinz Eugen and gave it to the Americans.
The Americans re-christened the ship as the USS Prinz Eugen and it was taken to Bikini for the test. it was nuked twice, survived, but, turned turtle and sank on it’s way back to Seattle for breaking.
One of my life’s goals is for us to sail to Kwajalein and get some close up (but not too close) pictures of the stern sticking up out of the water. It’s not QUITE on the way to Australia, but, we can try.
Interesting thread. I wonder if they monitoring the radioactivity on those islands in a way you can view from the internet.
You’d think so by now, right? You’d also thing there would be a research interest in doing so.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki both are thriving cities? Why? What is the science behind that?
2767 tons of distillate would be about 749,850 gallons.
2767 tons of Number 6 oil would be about 863,300 gallons.
I have a background with radioactive materials, so I have always been interested in this.
One of the proposals I always found attractive was encasing the radioactive waste in huge bullet shaped casks, and dumping them in the area in the deep south Pacific (It has been years, but it was called something like “The Great Barren Zone” but I can’t remember now)
That area that is vast, generally devoid of many forms of sea life, and covered with an incredibly deep layer in deep water of some primordial ooze. I think it contains “Point Nemo” which is the furthest distance one can get from land anywhere on earth. It is also the earth’s largest geologically inert area.
They did some tests and when they sent some tests down in the hydrodynamically streamlined caskets, they picked up so much velocity it apparently buried itself so deeply in the ooze and sealed itself up afterwards, and the ooze was nearly electrostatic in its “clinginess” that the caskets became encased.
I thought that was a damn good idea.
Operation Cereberus (The Channel Dash) was an interesting operation in which the Prinz Eugen participated.
[a little radioactive oil could contaminate the whole damn oceans of the world]
Miniscule compared to the radiation being leaked from JAPAN’S nuclear reactor.
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Bingo!
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