American nuclear bombs still stored in Netherlands

Twenty two American nuclear bombs are stored in underground vaults at the Volkel air base in the Netherlands, Dutch newspaper The Telegraaf reported Monday. It said that former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers has confirmed the presence of the bombs in a documentary of the National Geographic to be broadcast this week. "I would never have thought those silly things would still be there in 2013, " Lubbers is quoted as saying. "I think they are an absolutely pointless part of a tradition in military thinking," he added. Lubbers was Dutch prime minister from 1982 to 1994. Experts told the paper that the bombs are B61 nuclear weapons and four times more powerful than the bombs dropped by the US on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.