Posted on 12/20/2006 12:49:16 PM PST by SmithL
OSLO -- More than 60 years after being torpedoed by the British navy, a Nazi submarine built to threaten allied ships continues to spread fear off the coast of Norway.
The rusting wreckage of the U-864, sunk in a desperate mission to supply Japan with advanced weapons technology, now poses a major environmental threat due to its poisonous cargo: 70 tons of mercury.
Residents on the tiny island of Fedje, located in the North Sea on roughly the same latitude as Scotland's Shetland Islands, want the sub removed. But authorities fear a salvage operation could result in a catastrophic spill, and suggest entombing the wreck in the seabed with rocks, cement and sand.
"Local people are very concerned," Fedje's Mayor Erling Walderhaug told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "They wanted it taken away so the danger would be gone for good."
The U-864 tried to skirt allied navy patrols on a last-ditch secret mission code-named "Caesar," to bring jet engine parts, missile guidance systems and mercury for weapons production to Germany's ally, Japan. British experts discovered the mission by breaking a German code.
In a rare underwater duel, the British submarine HMS Venturer stalked the U-864 for three hours before it finally sank it on Feb. 9, 1945, about 2 1/2 miles off Fedje.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
One Ping Only
put her up on eBay
"non-drivable, parts only"
That's a lot of Mercury.
How deep? 70 tons of mercury is worth a whole lotta $$.
I don't think mercury is water soluable & is heavier than water, so we're talking a few molecules getting pushed around by massive amounts of water, right? I'm sure there are or have been fish with higher than usual levels of mercury in their fatty tissue in the area, but other than that, can't see what the big fuss is about.
Its pretty deadly once it gets loose as they found out
in Japan; see the pics of the births from the early
60's...
A mission for the Glomar Explorer..
Monday's Metal Prices
By The Associated Press
11:00 AM PDT, July 31, 2006
Mercury - $583.00 per 76 lb flask, N.Y.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
70 tons/140,000 lbs = 1842 76 lb flasks x $583 = $1,073,886
It sure won't be cleaned up for the rights to the mercury....
70 tons? I guess that's at least 3 molecules.
Build this long glass tube which will be attached to the mercury containers. This northern thermometer will record the global warming and siphon all the mercury off the sub as the temp rises to new heights!
A special tax on Alblore's movie royalties will be used to fund this project.
I don't remember what the actual, uncompressed volume of a tank is, but the weight of the salvaged mercury was
more than the winch could handle.
That had to split up the haul.
I recall reading the story of the divers who discovered the U-boat off the coast of NJ. For a brief period of time, they thought they had discovered this mercury-carrying sub. At first they thought they'd be rich, till they realized how dangerous the material was.
Democratic operatives broke into the G/E offices and made off with secret files. This was shortly before Republican operatives broke into democratic headquarters ...
Interesting. I remember in my high school physics class, my teacher had a 5 gallon jar that was about half-full of mercury. He'd float large blocks of metal in it just to show the principles of density. (And this was in the mid-1990s...not too long ago.)
Mercury is indeed poisonous, but it is not so bad as the alarmists and lawyers make of it. It generally pools together and lends itself mightily to being picked up. I've handled it a great deal, and I'm still very much intact. One does need to be cautious of the vapors. A mask takes care of that. In cold water, there would be very little danger from the stuff. Alarmists. We could do quite well without all of the fear mongering. I put this in the same category as the danger level schools assign to one inch long GI Joe weapons.
I should have said, "until they realized the cost of treating it as a hazardous material."
Either way, it is interesting that they have found this submarine.
Wouldn't this mercury just sink into the ocean floor?
When I was in high-school chemistry, there was a pint jar about half full of mercury in the supply closet. We used to hold little globs of it in our hands, and that was nearly 40 years ago, so I guess it's not all that deadly unless ingested. The cool part was to drop one of these globs and watch it splatter into zillions of tiny balls.
"In a rare underwater duel, the British submarine HMS Venturer stalked the U-864 for three hours before it finally sank it on Feb. 9, 1945, about 2 1/2 miles off Fedje."
There's the answer! The Norwegians can sue the Brits for damages. Deep pockets and all that.
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