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North Wales wind farm bombs should be exploded under the sea, claims expert
Credit: By David Powell | Daily Post | 28 Feb 2014 | www.dailypost.co.uk ~~
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Translate: FROM English | TO English
Three bombs from World War II should be separated and detonated underwater at sea, an expert claims.
Retired Mike Barker, 73, who used to work for the Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment in Kent, spoke out after reading about the discovery of three ordnance devices near Gwynt y Môr windfarm , off Pensarn.
RWE Innology, which is building its 160-turbines, yesterday said it is still working to safely dispose of the bombs which are “at least eight and a half miles” offshore.
Mr Barker, who received an MBE for gallantry in 1972, is credited with developing the “wheelbarrow” robot used by the Army bomb squad.
Mr Barker, of Kent, believes the bombs off North Wales may have been dropped by a German bomber on to a British frigate or destroyer, missed their targets and failed to explode.
He said: “The bombs have no significant risk to anyone on the shore. The Navy would probably isolate them, drag them off 5oo metres from each other and detonate them, well away from the turbines.”
He claims 500m is a safe distance because fragments from a detonation can travel at least 250 metres even underwater.
Even if it were below the surface people on the shore would still hear the explosion, he insisted.
Karen Maurice, a spokeswoman for RWE Innology, the developers of Gwynt Y Môr in Liverpool Bay, said the company had taken advice from the Joint Service Explosions Ordnance Disposal Unit and it will be private contractors who eventually remove the devices.
She said an exclusion zone remains in place but windfarm construction work continues.
Officials last week applied for licences from Natural Resources Wales in connection with the disposal of the bombs. The officials hope to have an answer by mid March.
The first device was found on January 28 with two more discovered afterwards.
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