<story><title>Lost nuclear device atop of Nanda Devi</title><url>https://www.livehistoryindia.com/cover-story/2020/09/18/nanda-devi-nuclear-device</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>wewake</author><text>Last week, I went into the rabbit hole and researched about the whole incident as my drinking water comes from one of the tributaries of Ganga river and this device has polluted a source glacier of the river - with plutonium. Great.&lt;p&gt;One of the climbers, Jim McCarthy claimed he got cancer due to the time he spent in close proximity of the device and according to him, the local people who helped them in the trek are long dead because they spent much more time huddled close to the device. They were not cautioned about the dangers as the mission was &amp;quot;top secret&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;When this story came to light back in 1978 after an article was published in a magazine and someone in US congress wrote a letter to the president, Indian govt. finally felt the need to assess the consequences of their blunder.&lt;p&gt;Researchers &lt;i&gt;hypothesized&lt;/i&gt; that the device melted through the snow before reaching the mountain rock surface where it remains stuck to this day. They tested water samples from the river for a year or two while the story was hot and public pressure was on. Ideally, they should have continued periodic testing forever and annual search missions to locate the device.</text></comment>
<story><title>Lost nuclear device atop of Nanda Devi</title><url>https://www.livehistoryindia.com/cover-story/2020/09/18/nanda-devi-nuclear-device</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>morsch</author><text>In a nice bit of symmetry, another RTG is lost in an ocean trench: &lt;i&gt;The fuel cask from the SNAP-27 unit carried by the Apollo 13 mission currently lies in 20,000 feet (6,100 m) of water at the bottom of the Tonga Trench in the Pacific Ocean. This mission failed to land on the moon, and the lunar module carrying its generator burnt up during re-entry into the Earth&amp;#x27;s atmosphere, with the trajectory arranged so that the cask would land in the trench. The cask survived re-entry, as it was designed to do,[18] and no release of plutonium has been detected. The corrosion resistant materials of the capsule are expected to contain it for 10 half-lives (870 years).[19]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Systems_for_Nuclear_Auxiliary_Power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Systems_for_Nuclear_Auxiliar...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>