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epleted uranium (DU) is uranium primarily composed of the isotope uranium-238 (U-238). Natural uranium is about 99.27 percent U-238, 0.72 percent U-235, and 0.0055 percent U-234. U-235 is used for fission in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Uranium is enriched in U-235 by separating the isotopes by mass. The byproduct of enrichment, called depleted uranium or DU, contains less than one third as much U-235 and U-234 as natural uranium. The external radiation dose from DU is about 60 percent of that from the same mass of natural uranium.[2] DU is also found in reprocessed spent nuclear reactor fuel, but that kind can be distinguished from DU produced as a byproduct of uranium enrichment by the presence of U-236.[3] In the past, DU has been called Q-metal, depletalloy, and D-38. DU is useful because of its very high density of 19.1 g/cm3. Civilian uses include counterweights in aircraft, radiation shielding in medical radiation therapy and industrial radiography equipment, and containers used to transport radioactive materials. Military uses include defensive armor plating and armor-piercing projectiles. The use of DU in munitions is controversial because of questions about potential long-term health effects.[4] Normal functioning of the kidney, brain, liver, heart, and numerous other systems can be affected by uranium exposure, because in addition to being weakly radioactive, uranium is a toxic metal.[5] It is weakly radioactive and remains so because of its long half-life. The aerosol produced during impact and combustion of depleted uranium munitions can potentially contaminate wide areas around the impact sites or can be inhaled by civilians and military personnel.[6] In a three week period of conflict in Iraq during 2003 it was estimated over 1000 tons of depleted uranium munitions were used, mostly in cities.[7] The U.S. Department of Defense claims that no human cancer of any type has been seen as a result of exposure to either natural or depleted uranium;[8] yet, U.S. DoD studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents continue to suggest the possibility of leukemogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects from chronic exposure[4], and ample evidence of the carcinogenic properties of uranium has appeared in the secondary medical literature since the 1950s.[9][10][11][12][13] Also, the UK Pensions Appeal Tribunal Service in early 2004 attributed birth defect claims from a February 1991 Gulf War combat veteran to depleted uranium poisoning.[14][15] A 2005 epidemiology review concluded: "In aggregate the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to DU."[16]
Enriched uranium was first manufactured in the 1940s when the US and USSR began their nuclear weapons and nuclear power programs. It was at this time that depleted uranium was first stored as an unusable waste product. There was some hope that the enrichment process would be improved and fissionable isotopes of U-235 could, at some future date, be extracted from the depleted uranium. This re-enrichment recovery of the residual uranium-235 contained in the depleted uranium is no longer a matter of the future: it has been practiced for several years.[17] Also, it is possible to design civilian power reactors with unenriched fuel, but only about 10 percent of reactors ever built utilize that technology, and both nuclear weapons production and naval reactors require the concentrated isotope. In the 1970s, the Pentagon reported that the Soviet military had developed armor plating for Warsaw Pact tanks that NATO ammunition could not penetrate. The Pentagon began searching for material to make denser bullets. After testing various metals, ordnance researchers settled on depleted uranium. The US and NATO military used DU penetrator rounds in the 1991 Gulf War, the Bosnia war,[18] bombing of Serbia, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[19] While clearing a decades-old Hawai'i firing range in 2005, workers found depleted uranium training rounds from the formerly classified Davy Crockett tactical battlefield nuclear delivery system from the 1960-70s.[20] These training rounds had been forgotten because they were used in a highly classified program and had been fired before DU had become an item of interest, more than 20 years before
Depleted uranium (DU) weaponry meets the definition of weapon of mass destruction in two out of three categories under U.S. Federal Code Title 50 Chapter 40 Section 2302. * Since 1991, the U.S. has released the radioactive atomicity equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs into the global atmosphere. That is 10 times the amount released during atmospheric testing which was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs.
Originally posted by PPGrocks
so if i'm correct...after doing some research about this..all the terrorists would have to do is collect all of the left behind depleted uranium rounds, refine it further, and walla now the towelheads have a bomb capable of fission???????????????????
Originally posted by AzoriaCorp
...Why wont anyone just put it on a rocket and blast it all into deep space? Why has that idea not come to fruition?
Originally posted by ANNED
i am a Vietnam veteran and go to the VA for treatment.
there i meet a lot of the gulf war veterans and none of them now blame DU for GWS.
[...]
WHY do they blame the anti DU people and not believe DU caused GWS
[...]
Americans and British, by contrast, got a total of 33 inoculations plus anti-nerve gas agent pills in addition to being dowsed with organophosphate pesticides. They did not get bottled water. ...