Are these guys fearmongering, or are they on to something?
Nuclear War Crimes: The effects of depleted uranium
Prioritizing weapon strength over long-term health and environmental considerations, the U.S. is using material that has poisoned our own troops, dumped thousands of tons of this toxic waste at home and abroad, and broken international law in the process. Meanwhile, the controversial nature of this material has led the U.S. government to deny its devastating side effects and long-term consequences. The substance is a heavy metal radioactive material called Uranium 238 (U-238), also known as Depleted Uranium or DU.
They make sense to me.
The National Lead Industry in Albany, New York, used to manufacture DU weapons in the 70’s. During that time, they would throw the leftover shavings in their chimney fires. This unorthodox and unregulated gross mishandling of DU and other chemicals finally led to their closure in 1984. The Department of Defense has been in charge of site remediation and the cleanup of as many as 56 neighboring properties at a cost to date of over $155 million. For twenty years, an active neighborhood group has been vigilant and pursuing compensation for health effects they believe are the consequences of NL practices.
If this stuff is that volatile, becoming a toxic cloud when burned in a furnace, how dangerous is DU when slammed into steel plate at 3,000+ miles an hour?
2 points.
The purpose of war is to kill, reguardless of how you do it.
The radioactivity is so low that it is really only harmful once it’s airborne and inhaled, if it’s harmful at all. However, your cell phone can kill you so we should probaly outlaw those too.
Starting from ~25 years ago, the Army ammunition test community was and now is, very, very careful with the stuff when firing. Not because of the radiation, but DU is more toxic than lead when breathed. Now the targets are completely enclosed indoor with negitive pressure. (check out the firing chamer ‘bubbles’ visable at APG and YPG though Google Earth.
p.s. We’re not quite to “3,000+ miles an hour” yet with tank ammo. 🙂
Unfortunately there is a live experiment in progress on this…
During the bombardment of Serbia&Montenegro (Yugoslavia at the time) DU ammunition have been used in several densly populated cities (centers of industry, where industrial legitimate targets were literally next door to huge project-like housing complexes). I am aware of studies in two of such cities (Nis, Pancevo) where incidences of children leukemia skyrocketed since in thousands of percents and adult cancer and leukemia incidences are up several hundred percents. Radiation is measurable in victims and DU dust still can be sampled all-over, hence other explanations are all but remote. How long lasting this effect will be remains to be seen.
Depleted uranium is the most effective material for ammunition used in tank warfare, due to its extreme density and hardness. Unfortunately, a tank hit by a DU round also becomes a toxic waste site which requires special handling to prevent contamination of the personnel performing the cleanup. Most scientists who don’t have a vested interest in the continued use of depleted uranium (such as military employment) regard it as dangerous, as does the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Its very name appears intended to make it sound harmless, but it is not truly depleted in any meaningful sense. It is still radioactive, but the particular uranium isotopes needed for nuclear fission have been largely separated out, leaving other still-dangerous isotopes remaining. However, its health risks arise not only from its radioactivity, but also because it’s a chemically toxic, heavy metal.
As #1 Richard says, the purpose of war is to kill. With that objective, depleted uranium is the gift that keeps on giving.
#1
“The purpose of war is to kill, reguardless of how you do it.”
Um, but it’s not supposed to kill our own troops, and it’s our own troops that have to deal with the stuff at the moment, when it’s “atomized”, and freshly floating around in the air.
Personally, I’ve inhaled plenty of C4 fumes (far, far too much), atomized DU, and other nasty stuff, and I’m *cough* fine *cough*. =]
– Sean
You can find an independent perspective on depleted uranium at the Federation of American Scientists at http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/du.htm with links on that page to other sources of information.
From what I read, the low radiation of DU is not much different than naturually occuring background radiation. The larger concern is inhaling DU dust or what happens when DU metal fragments enter the body (as in after an explosion) and whether there are threats to civilians who scavange old battlegrounds collecting DU metal.
Good point, Smartalix. That was the reason DU use was condemned by the U.N. Human Rights Commission. They weren’t passing judgement on its immediate effects as a weapon, but on the indiscriminate, lingering danger to non-combatants who had to live in the ‘hood where it had been used.
The minds that devised DU never contemplated losing the war. Only losers have to clean up the mess.
The purpose of war is not to kill people and break things. It’s the use of force to achieve strategic and political goals. Wars are usually won and lost based on the sustainability of the combatants economy. Death is a by product.
The UN Human Rights Commision is more worried about making the Western World look bad than dealing with human rights violations.
Nobody likes that it may kill Civilians, Nobody thinks it great stuff that we should make kids toys out of. I mean it’s made out of the stuff used to make nukes for Gods sake. BUT right now it is the best stuff for the job and until something else comes along I’d rather be sure the enemy tank is gonna blow than worry about what may happen in 50 years.
1. You get to deal almost exclusively with dust from DU — not scraps. Uranium is pyrophoric. If there is air present, it will burn to completion.
2. Check back in on the earlier post on uranium miners and genetic defects follow-on. http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=4967
I must admit I’d always thought only in terms of ill effects from the radioactive side of things; but, the research that prompted this post indicates that the effect of uranium simply as heavy molecules that can and will bond with DNA is equally dangerous. And I know damned well even the pet scientists paid to approve DU ammo haven’t checked this aspect out..
“Depleted Uranium.. is it safe?”
Why not just ask
“Cyanide in baggies… safe to keep in your home?”
“Nuclear vitriified waste.. safe to keep in your garage?”
As if the answer would ever be “yes”.
The military has never had any long term concern for long tem effects of their actions, since they have an immediate problem to resolve, and the solution overrides the consequences. So we have things like “Agent Orange” which everyone in the military was told was safe to handle… they knew better then, and we certainly know better now.
In the military you are one of two things: the enemy, or a “number” to be used as needed to meet a goal. And in neither case you can hope for your own well-being to be a high priority. And if you are a civilian that just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, they won’t even bother keeping track of you if something bad happens to you.. it is official DOD policy to not track civilian casualties or US military consequences.
Yes.. breathing depleted uranium is bad for you… anyone that says otherwise has probably been breathing depleted uranium.
The military has never had any long term concern for long tem effects of their actions,
Then why did they bother devloping smart mines?
the purpose of WAR isnt to kill…
Its the purpose to DISUADE the other side, from fighting back.
any comment about ‘HOW DU ISNT bad’ is like saying a 1oz dirty bomb is SAFE…NOT..
It can radiate 6sq blocks, so that you cant LIVe there.
WRONG…
its not the loser that deals with the ‘left overs’, its the winners, that have to clean up the MESS BOTH sides created..
And if winning means we have clean up a radioactive WASTE….Thats MORe money out of our pockets.
The military has LONg been short sighted, in many things.
BUSINESS is BUSINESS, dont mean its correct… It means they MADe us pay for something, and they got our money, and have NO concern HOW we use it. Business would prefer you DIDNT have a warrenty, lemon law, or could return ANYTHING if it broke or didnt work.
#12
“The purpose of war is not to kill people and break things. It’s the use of force to achieve strategic and political goals. Wars are usually won and lost based on the sustainability of the combatants economy. Death is a by product.”
Very true. It actually seems there is a misconception on the purpose of war, which probably comes from too many movies and tv shows. Ideally you’d like to achieve your goal without killing a single person, or destroying a single thing. Of course that never happens, but that is the idea.
– Sean
I guess nobody bothered reading the link on this site, where it says;
“Then in February 2005, Arthur Bernklau, Executive Director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, reported a little known VA statistic that of the 580,400 soldiers in the First Gulf War, 11,000 are now dead and 325,000 were on permanent disability as of the year 2000.”
It’s a big mess. Rolling Stone did a great piece on this DU stuff.
DU may be bad for our troops to some degree but getting killed by a tank whose armor you otherwise could not penetrate is probably worse. DU is the best type of round for armor penetration at range. It allows our tanks to stay outside of most tanks killing range while allowing us to punch a hole through virtually any type of armor.
The physics behind it are amazing. The round will travel through an enemy tank at such high velocity that it can actually suck the enemy soldiers out of the exit hole.
When I was in infantry, we all understood that DU was not totally harmless but we liked what it did for us. We were trained to protect our tanks and our tanks were there to protect us.
You have trade offs in life. We all drive even though cars killed 42,000 people in the U.S. last year. The reason is because the benefits outweigh the risks. This is much the same for DU. Yes, you can get into all of the arguments about “what about the people who have to live where we have used it?” etc… But the bottom line is that it works and that for our soldiers, the benefits outweigh the risks.
“Out of 580,400 soldiers in the First Gulf War, 11,000 are now dead!”
OH… MY.. GOD…
This sounds alarming until you think about it. That is one death per 52.76 soldiers. Gulf War 1 was around 15 years ago. Take any random sample of 580,400 people and 15 years later one in 50 something are going to be dead. I would actually think that this number is low if anything. The quote does not say that they all died as a result of the war. That is just the conclusion that you are led to draw.
As for the “disabled” I have to call B.S. I know many soldiers who served in Gulf War 1. They were in many different units. I only know one who is, in any way, disabled and his injuries occured after he came back to the states.
I Googled his quote and did a little checking on Arthur Bernklau. He is an anti-war activist with an agenda. I could not find one reputable publication that carried this story and I do not know where he gets his stats.
I too read Rolling Stone but please don’t try to argue that they are objective. They are extremely biased. They never miss a chance to take a shot at anyone that they do not agree with and they will not let the facts get in the way of a story.
Don’t drink the Kool-Aide. Think for yourself.
#21 is 100% on the money with this one.
Eideard raises an important point. While some have exaggerated the risk from the mild radioactivity of U-238, it is important to note that it is also a “heavy metal” in the sense of lead, mercury, so that in addition to the (mild) radioactivity, it has toxic effects similar to other “heavy metals”.
> how dangerous is DU when slammed
> into steel plate at 3,000+ miles an hour?
Very dangerous. Lethal even. That’s the point. DU is amazing stuff. It will go through any tank armor like a hot knife through butter.
My father worked on missiles for a living. Many years before Desert Storm when I was considering going into the military, he told me: “You can do whatever you want, but I would *highly* recommend you don’t go into tanks.” He had two reasons: DU and Maverick missiles.
Ok,
with ALL these stat’s…How lethal would be a Tongstin carbide Bit fired at that range… Or how about 100lbs explosive tip weapons…CALLEd a TOW missle…
and you THINk we are fighting something BETTEr then a T80 russian tank??? I REALLY dought it.. and you are trying to seriously tell me, they ALSO have the heavy shielding…
NO one would sell it to them….
24,
Du is mildly radioactive…Untill you compress it, and disperse it in a LARGE plum…
this is like taking a water balloon and SMACKING it hard into someone, INSIDE your home, and trying not to find an UNWET spot…
the balloon was FINE until you Burst it, the water was SAFE, until you burst the balloon…
NOw you have water ALL over the room, and you cant step far without stepping in water.
ECA,
DU is the only round guaranteed to penetrate ceramic armor. Yes, many T-80’s have been retrofitted with armor that, while not as good as our reactive armor, is pretty good.
Tungsten core is pretty good but not nearly as good as DU and TOW’s are far more expensive and obviously, given their size, you cannot carry as many.
DU allows our tanks to penetrate targets at ranges where loss of kinetic energy would render tungsten core ineffective.
You are probably right ECA, DU is probably not good for you. I don’t think anyone is arguing that it is. I think the radioactive threat thing is a bit overblown though. I’m sure if you eat a piece of it, you would get sick. 🙂
Or get the dust into your eyes???
Or farm on the land that it was used on??
Or if it blows in the wind and you BREATH IT??
If it gets into your cannals and wells, sence these countries DONT have closed systems..??
And isnt a TOW, able to be placed on a JEEP/HumVee, compared to a FULL tank?
COME ON!! A little thinking…
I’d rather have 100 humvees running around then 1 BIG tank. And its CHEAPER…