DU, that’s “duh!” for the rest of you!
Of all the nutty-paranoid crap out there, I can find little that comes close to the utter insanity that’s reserved for depleted uranium (du.) Depleted uranium, that sounds so bad. Probably- kind of radioactive, should be stored as a glowing green jelly in leaking 50 gallon drums on some forgotten airbase. Just like in the cartoons.
But no! DU is actually USED! They make armor out of this crap! Bullets! Aircraft ballast! This stuff MUST be coating everything with a fine radioactive dust! It’s about to kill us all!!!
Morons! DUH!
A little reading on the subject is very informative.
First, Uranium; a naturally occurring substance. It’s very rare which is a good thing! Good because it’s also naturally radioactive. It decays rapidly spewing out alpha-beta particles and gamma radiation. You don;t want a few pounds of this stuff in your house. You would run the risk of getting cancer in the long term.
Now I’m not talking about fuel rods for power plants or chunks of plutonium. I’m talking about natural uranium. That stuff in dirt, probably under your own house right now! It’s a very dense metal, much more dense than lead but by itself; the stuff is not too dangerous. It takes many refining steps to make uranium into the atomic plant fuel that we all know and love. I mean that quite literally. If you don’t like atomic power I URGE you to turn off your computer, have yourself unhooked from the electrical grid and stop using electricity for any purpose whatsoever. If you use electricity, you use atomic power.
Live with it and stop whining!
Now, depleted uranium, that’s some of the stuff left over when uranium fuel rods are made. According to the World Health Organization: “
The uranium remaining after removal of the enriched fraction contains about 99.8% 238U, 0.2% 235U and 0.001% 234U by mass; this is referred to as depleted uranium or DU.
That’s right, most of the uranium is refined out, only a tiny percentage goes on to power our homes, our air conditioners and our electric toothbrushes. DU is the stuff that’s left over.
Is it safe? Well no. you don’t really want this stuff I your house ether, but it’s not the glowing-radiation spewing substance that some of the more hysterical public would have you believe. It’s not really very radioactive; to get a dose you would have to be in contact with this stuff for at least 250 hours, that’s around sixty days. That means you should not make furniture out of it, or rings, or eat it.
What it’s dandy for (unfortunately) is ammunition. See, this stuff is very dense, its sheering properties make it far more effective in penetrating armor plate than lead or steel ammunition. It can burn when heated rapidly and become a toxic dust, just like lead or steel. DU however is slightly more radioactive than steel (yes I said- slightly.) Kid’s shouldn’t play in and around battlefields where this stuff is used. Kids shouldn’t play around battlefields at all because of many toxic substances and unexploded munitions. As I said, you don’t want to eat this stuff but you don’t want to eat lead, or steel, Teflon, gasoline, or diesel fuel either.
“On impact with a hard target (such as a tank) the penetrator may generate a cloud of DU dust within the struck vehicle that ignites spontaneously creating a fire that increases the damage to the target. Due to the pyrophoric nature of DU, many of the DU particles and fragments that are formed during and following impact and perforation will spontaneously ignite, resulting in a shift of the particle size probability distribution function to a smaller mean diameter. As a result of physical differences between DU and its oxides, the oxide particles tend to crumble under relatively weak mechanical forces, further shifting the particle size to an even smaller mean diameter.
I have a friend who works with the stuff. Yes, she is a nuclear engineer (when she’s not raising horses) and works with this stuff every day. Apparently the place they have this stuff is contaminated but not because of DU. Because of compounds like radioactive mercury and a stew of other substances. DU (she says) is the least of their problems. It’s nearly inert.
You know what else DU is used for? Radiation shielding! For hospitals. It’s more effective than lead shielding. When it’s encased in plastic or ordinary cloth it’s *not* radioactive. Much less than say old radium dial watch. You yourself are probably more radioactive than a chunk of DU. Just from traces of good-old natural uranium deposited in your bones. And you didn’t get it because humans mine it, traces of uranium and all kinds of other stuff are all around us.
Here is one overly hysterical web page.
“To: All Concerned Humanitarians
We, the undersigned, demand an immediate ban on all depleted uranium weaponry. This highly carcinogenic poison is killing babies and children by the tens of thousands in Iraq and will soon be doing the same in the Balkans. It is a form of genocide and a severe environmental threat. We are not winning a war by giving babies cancer. We are not necessarily endorsing an end to war, only an end to using depleted uranium. These countries were once our allies and may someday be our allies again. Our problems are with the leaders of these countries, not with the children, babies, parents, and grandparents who are people just like us. The depleted uranium will poison the Earth long after the wounds of war have healed.
It is not in the best interest of the UN, NATO, nor the United States of America, to poison large segments of the population indiscriminately and it will not be tolerated. The handling of these weapons may poison our own servicemen and women. We are supposed to be the defenders of the weak and disenfranchised. We are not supposed to play the role of the Great Satan that so many now see us in. Let’s return to the role of the Peacekeeper and leave genocide for the bad guys on the other side. There can be no winners in a war fought between two evils. “
The problem of this kind of thing is that it vastly overstates one issue, replacing it with a nonsensical one. DU is not the problem, war is the problem. Diplomatic situations where the only negotiation is down the barrel of a gun is the real problem. The real issue is that weapons invariably become more and more effective. DU is not poisoning large segments of the population no more than any other munition might be. The most hazardous form of DU is a fragment entering your body at some fraction of the speed of sound. People have this junk lodged inside them and they are not dropping dead any more than people with chunks of lead inside of them instantly die of lead poisoning.
It’s pretty irresponsible to overstate something to this extent in any case. Some, non critical irrational people might be swayed but for myself, I tend to look at the basic theses of an issue, from both sides and if one party appears to be deliberately misstating their position? How can anything they say be taken for granted?
The use of DU munitions should be further studied. The effects of using this substance and the long term effects on and off the battlefield should be better known. That seems an awfully long way from declaring this substance an agent of genocide. Saying that DU will “poison the earth? is just silly and alarmist. Uranium, carbon, petrochemicals, fertilizers, lead, overpopulation, human waste and garbage are all poisoning the planet. Focusing all our attention to a relatively minor problem at the expense of much larger issues is to my mind stupid and unproductive.
This is exactly where the “duh” factor in DU resides.
Some good reading on this subject;
World Health Organization Fact Sheet.