UNITED KINGDOM - On December 22, 1999, a Korean Airlines (KAL) Boeing 747 cargo plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Stansted Airport, en route to Milan. KAL 8509 only managed to climb 967 feet into a rain-streaked sky before it veered out of control and barreled into the ground at full speed, killing all four crewmembers aboard.
Firemen at the KAL crash site near Great Hallingbury. Photo courtesy of the BBC |
The plane came down in a field near Hatfield Forest, within half a mile of the hamlet of Great Hallingbury. The impact triggered a 600-foot tall fireball that lit up the sky and left behind a towering mushroom cloud.
Investigators reported that the fire consumed 33 tons of fuel, 64 tons of cargo and an undisclosed amount of "low level explosives."
But there was another danger on board KAL 8509. More than two weeks after the crash, Britain's Air Accident Investigation Board revealed that the Boeing jet had "contained several hundred kilograms of depleted uranium."
In a Winter 2000 cover story, Earth Island Journal revealed that many of the world's older jumbo jets carry large amounts of radioactive depleted uranium (DU) in the form of small, heavy counterweights hidden inside wingtips, tails and elevators. Over the past 40 years, dozens of planes containing DU weights have crashed and burned in the US, Europe and Asia.
When contacted by the Journal, US Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson Mitch Barker stated that the FAA was aware of the problem but had not ordered the removal of DU components because the agency did not deem the situation "critical."
In the small British village of Great Hallingbury, however, the situation has now become extremely critical.
BBC News reported that the downed jet "was totally fragmented. Light debris from the impact explosion, carried aloft by the fireball, was blown by the prevailing south, south-westerly wind and deposited over a large area ..."
Adam Fresco, a reporter for the London Sunday Times visited the site and expressed disbelief that "the small pieces of wreckage scattered over hundreds of yards had once been a huge plane." A large crater marked the impact point and "debris still hung from the few scorched trees left standing."
"The debris field goes on for hundreds of yards," BBC Reporter James Blatch related. "This Boeing 747 appears to have been completely and utterly destroyed." The devastation was so complete, BBC Transport Reporter Tom Heap noted, that police searching the one-square-mile impact zone were "no longer looking for whole bodies but human remains."
A Boeing spokesperson told the BBC that the company "began using DU in the early 1960s ... The Korean 747 was delivered to the airline in June 1980. We think it contained about 300 kg [661 pounds] of DU." The Boeing official insisted that the counterweights would not emit poisonous clouds of uranium dioxide, unless they were "exposed to a fire of 800 degrees Celsius [1472°F] for more than four hours."
The BBC noted, however, that "DU is known to vaporize into a spray of burning dust on striking a hard object." As the Journal's report revealed, tests by the Battelle Laboratory demonstrated that DU begins to oxidize at 350 C and starts to burn on its own at 700 C.
Malcolm Hooper, professor emeritus of medicinal chemistry at the University of Sunderland, challenged official assurances that the public was in "no danger" from exposure to DU. "If no precautions were taken at the crash scene," Hooper told BBC News Online, "people will have been exposed to hazards that could prove fatal. Those who were handling the wreckage should have been advised of the risk. I can't see any way you could have a significant fire in a crash like this without producing the conditions that would allow a potentially hazardous release of DU."
Because of the location and high winds at the crash site, the KAL disaster may have exposed hundreds of people to airborne DU contamination. The BBC observed that the crash "was close enough to the M11 [highway] to cause cars and lorries [trucks] travelling home in the rush hour to swerve as pieces of debris were blown towards the motorway."
Neill Foster, an eyewitness who was driving on the highway at the time of the crash, told BBC News: "There was lost of falling debris, all on fire, falling on roads surrounding the area."
Over the past 30 years, 16 KAL planes have crashed, with a loss of 718 lives. On December 26, KAL announced that it would replace 15 of its older DU-laden planes with new aircraft purchased from Airbus and Boeing. (Unfortunately, KAL plans to sell the older planes - DU counterweights presumably included.)
As the Journal's investigation revealed, the aircraft industry is uncomfortable discussing the use of DU counterweights. Airline manufacturers have been quietly replacing DU counterweights with more expensive tungsten versions.
The FAA still refuses to answer the Journal's requests to reveal the percentage of older jumbo jets still flying with DU components. Nor has the FAA offered to identify the particular aircraft or the airlines that fly them.
To date, the Environmental Protection Agency has not responded to Journal requests to investigate sites in the US where aircraft containing DU components have crashed and burned.
Jet Carrying Depleted Uranium Crashes in England