Depleted Uranium

Is America the real nuclear threat in the Middle East?

Depleted Uranium Dice, ca. 1950s. They are nickel coated and 7/8" across. All you have to do is pick these things up to know they are made of DU - not even lead is this heavy.

"Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al-Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer. Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment."

— Jalal Ghazi, for New America Media

"The U.S. and British militaries used more than 1,700 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq in the 2003 invasion (Jane's Defence News, 4/2/04)-on top of 320 tons used in the 1991 Gulf War (Inter Press Service, 3/25/03). Literally every local person I've ever spoken with in Iraq during my nine months of reporting there knows someone who either suffers from or has died of cancer.

Ghazi reported that in Fallujah, which bore the brunt of two massive U.S. military operations in 2004, as many as 25 percent of newborn infants have serious physical abnormalities. Cancer rates in Babil, an area south of Baghdad, have risen from 500 cases in 2004 to more than 9,000 in 2009. Dr. Jawad al-Ali, the director of the Oncology Center in Basra, told Al Jazeera English (10/12/09) that there were 1,885 cases of cancer in all of 2005; between 1,250 and 1,500 patients visit his center every month now. — 'The New 'Forgotten' War' By Dahr Jamail, 15 March, 2010

Even the BBC was forced to acknowledge the reality (Listen:'Child deformities 'increasing' in Falluja' 4 March, 2010). True to form I searched the BBC Website in vain for the video clip I watched last week, so you are spared the horrific scenes I witnessed, recorded in Fallujah's main hospital. Had this been Saddam's legacy, we would have seen images like the one above endlessly repeated in the mass media, complete with UN resolutions and the like."

– Dahr Jamail,

Instead though, a short piece posted on the BBC Website calmly states that:

"In a statement, the Pentagon said that "No studies to date have indicated environmental issues resulting in specific health issues. Unexploded ordinance, including improvised explosive devises, are a recognised hazard.""

William Bowles, Global Research, March 23, 2010
'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.
The U.S. has permanently contaminated the global atmosphere with radioactive pollution having a half-life of 2.5 billion years."
The U.S. has used the weapons in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and twice in Iraq since 1991, describing them as "conventional". DU weapons have been supplied to Israel by the US, who used them on the people of Gaza.
DU on the battlefield has three effects on living systems: it is a heavy metal "chemical" poison, a "radioactive" poison and has a "particulate" effect due to the very tiny size of the particles that are 0.1 microns and smaller.
The blueprint for DU weaponry is a 1943 Manhattan Project memo to Gen. L. Groves that recommended development of radioactive materials as poison gas weapons – dirty bombs, dirty missiles and dirty bullets.
DU weapons are very effective kinetic energy penetrators, but even more effective bioweapons since uranium has a strong chemical affinity for phosphate structures concentrated in DNA.
DU is the Trojan Horse of nuclear war – it keeps giving and keeps killing. There is no way to clean it up, and no way to turn it off because it continues to decay into other radioactive isotopes in over 20 steps. Terry Jemison at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs stated in August 2004 that over 518,000 Gulf-era veterans (14-year period) are now on medical disability, and that 7,039 were wounded on the battlefield in that same period. Over 500,000 U.S. veterans are homeless.
In some studies of soldiers who had normal babies before the war, 67 percent of the post-war babies are born with severe birth defects – missing brains, eyes, organs, legs and arms, and blood diseases.
In southern Iraq, scientists are reporting five times higher levels of gamma radiation in the air, which increases the radioactive body burden daily of inhabitants. In fact, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan are uninhabitable.			Cancer starts with one alpha particle under the right conditions. One gram of DU is the size of a the dot at the end of this sentence and releases 12,000 alpha particles per second.

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The vast majority, probably more than 95% of DU weapons are HEAT weapons (High Energy Anti Tank), also used as anti-building weapons, including the famous "bunker buster" type of weapon, but smaller scale, lets say pillbox-buster weapons, and more especially used for destroying city centre buildings, such as national parliament buildings, museums, water pumping stations,hospitals and schools (of course by accident, haha)

As HEAT ordnance, the DU is used for its high incendiary and explosive behaviour, that is mechanical and chemical not nuclear behaviour

The DU is used as sheaths or "nose cones" on shells and missiles. Artillery shells of size 105 mm, 155 mm, 203 mm are typically modified, to become HEAT ordnance, as are RPG-type shoulder launched missiles, such as Milan-type or Eryx-type missiles

These projectiles have the military terminology APFDS, a bizarre Anglo-French abbreviation, meaning Armour Piercing Fleche Discarding Sabot. The "fleche" is an extreme hardened steel dart, inside the DU nose cone of the shell or missile

When the projectile hits a tank hull (or "hardened" building, or non-hardened civilian buildings, of course by tragic error haha), the DU simultaneously explodes and catched fire, weakening a certain area of the hull; the "fleche" is then projected into, and penetrates the hull. This sets fire to, and explodes the onboard stock of shells and bullets of the tank's cannons, etc, in about 400 milliseconds.

DU weapons are especially dangerous, for their radiological and chemical toxicity, because of their behaviour - they violently explode, projecting tiny particles of poisonous very long-lived residues over a large but finite perimeter, but because uranium has such high density (over 19, one of the very few metals, with gold, having a density above 19) it falls to ground and into water courses, and does not get wind dispersed over an extremely large perimeter.

Ironically, one sideffect of these indicrimiante weapons is that Tommies and GI Boys chewing gum, etc - ingurgitate and breathe in some of the poison - the pheonmenom that affected enough Allied soldiers to be discussed in even the 'patriotic' media and given a name - Gulf War Syndrome.

Depleted Uranium is cheap and abundant because it is a by-product of the nuclear power industry.

Back in 1990 an estimated 15 000 tons a year of waste uranium needed to be got rid of. one way or another. At their height in late 80s early 90s, MOX plants in UK and France - recycled about 4 000 tons a year.

But the world annual DU output, today, is probably far above 35 000 tons meaning at least 30 000 tons a year is accumulating, roughly 60% of this in Europe and USA. Over 10 years, this generates a 300 000 to 400 000 ton stockpile, taking account of the annual growth of fuel burn.(This could be a large under-estimate rather than over-estimate.)

Storing depleted uranium costs money, its slightly radioactive, and chemically poisonous, can catch fire, and Rogue Nations, supposedly, want to get their hands on it to make Dirty Bombs.

So finding ANY POSSIBLE industrial use for DU is and will be important, to reduce the growing costs of the full nuclear cycle.

The diabolical and delirious ingenuity used to try finding ANY industrial use for DU is impressive. It has included golf clubs, golf balls, tennis rackets and - until about 1997 - every single Boeing plane ever built: final air trim and "balancing" used up to 50 kilograms of DU per plane in the B747 series. Think its still there, plenty of 747s are really ancient. Playground equipment for children is a popular use for radioactive waste.

But Depleted Uranium weapons are the ideal use, because, due to the high cash value of shells and missiles, the DU then commands a high price.

This is the principal rationale for DU weapons. Ghastly consequences for innocent civilians, let alone soldiers? But this is economics, not warfare. Ther Geneva conventions do not apply!

A large part of the original research for this article has been by Anndra Ceapadh Donald and donated to PI for wider dissemination.