Thread: Poisonous Legacy

Its disgusting absoloutely. Nuclear Weapons in acton just on a smaller scale then Hiroshima.

This is also a huge problem in the former Soviet Union. Did you know the Soviet Union tested its missles in the sands of Kazakhystan and today the vestiges of these nuclear tests are a major health problem for the people of kazakystan.

Its amazing how cruel the words governments are. No thought for human life.

Onother issue although not nuclear is the Soviet Unions handling of some of its Republics which later became indpendent countries but that is onother story.

It really is a shame, and I don't mean that in the cliche "Oh shame on you", I am damned ashamed to be an American. I cannot wait to denounce my citizenship.

Originally Posted by Elis D.

POISONOUS LEGACY *Very Graphic Images of Major Birth Defects*

I am very skeptical about the claims concerning what caused that.

Originally Posted by Elis D.

I cannot wait to denounce my citizenship.

What are you waiting for? I hate to hear it, but the government is not going to stop you.

i dont have ant money and i don't have anywhere to go, and im probably not gonna denounce citizenship but im gonna move the fuck out of here when i can im and never volunteer that information to anyone








I'm really drunk I shouldn't be posting right now...... thankfully i got spell check so my posts are readable.

So, I'm sober now, and I just rewatched this.


I need to not believe everything I read when I'm drunk.


I stand by hating my country though. We're run by a gang of assholes.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

I am very skeptical about the claims concerning what caused that.

Ok reasonable enough, i can show you pictures of aborted fetuses and say they are the result of depelted uruaniam. But look at the video and see what its talking about.

The pentagon has used depelted uranium in its ammunitions in a variety of different weapons and when they get fired they leave dangerous radiocative residue. do you think use of depleted uranium is ok? Are you against it?

In the video they give some statistics. off the top of my head it says Cancer has gone up 100% in Iraq since the 1990's and deformities have gone up 400-600% sinc the gulf war. Do you think the use of depleted uranium in weapons by your country in Iraq has anything to do with this?

PS im not just going after the USA on this, this is a very very serious problem in the former soviet union aswell because of carelesseness on the part of the Soviets.

Disgusting..horribly disgusting.

I can't believe I sat through and watched the whole video..

I also can't wait to move the fu*k out.

Need citations plz

Originally Posted by dragonoverlord

The pentagon has used depelted uranium in its ammunitions in a variety of different weapons and when they get fired they leave dangerous radiocative residue. do you think use of depleted uranium is ok? Are you against it?

Depleted uranium is only very slightly radioactive (hence depleted). Its alleged toxicity would come from its nature as a heavy metal, yet it's still less toxic than substances like mercury or lead.

Honestly, in the quantities used, it's really not that big of an issue. The most significant danger it poses is probably to the personnel that handle it every day.

Perhaps this thread will become more substantive if we take a step back and examine the object of debate. In practice, I find that the properties of Depleted Uranium are poorly understood by those who cite it as a dangerous contaminant.

First of all, DU is the same thing as Uranium 238, the most innocuous isotope of all the transuranics. Natural Uranium, pitchblende or yellowcake, consists of 99.3% U238, 0.7% U235, and a trace amount of U234. For nuclear power reactors you need about 5-7% U235 in the fuel rods in order for them to be neutron captive and sustain a criticality. HEU for weapons needs to be at least 90% U235 or greater.

As you can see from these percentages, when you enrich Uranium for fuel in either reactors or weapons you're going to end up with a lot of leftover U238. U238 has additional useful properties that makes it worth keeping around.

Modern fission-fusion-fission weapons use U238 as a tamper to add a final kick to their yield and increase the efficiency of their fusion secondaries. U238 is an excellent reflector of neutrons, so as the fusion secondary is being compressed and generating its massive neutron flux, the neutrons are kept bouncing around inside of it for a few shakes longer, thereby increasing the amount of fuel that fuses before the bomb blows itself apart. Second to this, a U238 nucleus will fission if you whack it hard enough, it's just that its binding energy defecit is so high that the only place you'll find neutrons energetic enough to overcome it is in a nuclear weapon. While the secondary is fusing and tossing out all kinds of neutrons, the U238 will absorb some of them and begin to fission itself, which releases even more energy than the secondary normally does. In the Castle Bravo test this is what happened. While the scientists at the time knew U238 would work as a tamper, they didn't know it would also fission. The 10-something tons of U238 that surrounded the hydrogen pit ended up fissioning and the Shrimp device yielded 15 megatons - triple what it was expected to.

That being said, the use of DU/U238 in AP munitions in no way is related to nuclear weapons. The assertion that it is is simply guilt by association; a textbook fallacy. Don't believe the activists who try to tell you this. They insult your intelligence by doing so, and are a waste of valuable gravity.

Without further ado, let's take a look at the properties of DU in ammunition:

Radiological properties of DU:

As far as radioactivity goes DU is a low-energy alpha particle emitter with a half life of over 4 billion years, so it's not dangerous radiologically unless you sprinkle it on your food for years at a time. Again, binding energy defecit is so high that spontaneous fission is only a freak occurence, meaning gamma emissions are virtually nonexistent for practical purposes. Alphas themselves are the least energetic of all particulate ionizing radiation, and are so large that the dead epidermal layer covering your body will stop them before they can even enter your system. Remember, radiation is not glowing green goo that will make your dick fall off and give your kids three heads.

While it can also be argued that DU is not strictly an alpha emitter because it is an amorphous mix of various decay products, this is by no means an accurate depiction of its radiological output. I will now explain why.

Any isotope has certain, very limited decay types that will emit a known type of radiation. It may be that an isotope could emite alpha, beta, and gamma through three different decays, but in the case of U-238 it emits only alpha or a gamma; there is no U-238 mode that allows a beta decay. U-238 is a gamma source because it does undergo spontaneous fission, however, the U-238 binding energy defecit is so high that the gamma rate is very low. In one mole of U-238, you can expect about 1 spontaneous fission per day releasing about 1.2KeV of gamma (before absorbtion and diffraction). That's why in most instances you see U-238's alpha mode listed as 100%; spontaneous fissions only 5.4x10^-5% of all decays and is too small to really acount for in any meaningful way.

By the same token, you were saying that it's a a beta source because U-238 isn't pure. Any U-238 is going to have some weirdo decay products that have a beta decay embedded it or some such. Those can have all the beta they want, but again, in the quantities they're present in DU it's not something that can be easily measured. One of those decays will happen about every 107 or 109 decays and you get less than 1KeV out of them (beta's not a very efficient decay in big atoms).

So the gamma/beta decay process of U-238 accounts for less than 1/100th of the aggregate ionizing radiation output. Utterly insignificant.

The chemical properties of DU:

The only form of DU that is of any harm at all to humans is oxidized DU dust, and it is only formed when DU bullets strike hard materials, like tanks or armored vehcles. And even then, it's only harmful when inhaled in large quantities as skin or light clothing protects from the alpha radiation and small quantities are easily and harmlessesly dealth with by the body like all the other naturally radioactive isotopes we inhale every second of every day.

Besides which, the toxic chemicals in those burnt out tanks is the far worse health problem... All the shots that miss sit harmlessly in the desert, not hurting anything. A DU penetrator is encased in a thin polymer coat at manufacture to protect against the sharpness of the tip and also the dust an incident bump could knock off. The only place DU detritus will be encountered will be inside the hulks of burned out tanks. Also, breathing tungsten dust from a more traditional AT round will be none the better for you, so the alternative critics suggest for DU is quite insignificant. Anyway, tungsten sucks when compared to DU. DU is about 50% more dense, and has way cool additional properties that make weaponizing it a favorable endeavor.

Physical properties of DU:

U238, for armor piercing munitions called DU, is also an excellent material for armor piercing munitions for a number of reasons

• DU is 1.7 times denser than lead and Tungsten, meaning that more kinetic energy can be packed into a penetrator of the same size.
• DU penetrators are self-sharpening due to their innate crystalline structure. This is a process called adiabatic shear.
• DU is pyrophoric - combusting as it's ablated in the same manner that flint and steel does. The resultant incindiary effects are particularly useful when it is considered for destroying armored vehicles, because the white-hot spall fragments will rattle around inside the cabin, detonating ammunition and igniting fuel.
• Because there's a surplus of it left over from enriching Uranium for power reactors, it's also dirt cheap. The only metal with superior AP qualities is Osmium, which is so fucking expensive that it's not worth the trouble.

First, a picture to help illustrate what adiabatic shear is:


Here you can see the difference in plasticity between the DU rod and WHA Tungsten rod on impact. While both show some signs of deformation, the DU rod is markedly less deformed, and focuses its energy on a smaller area, resulting in greater penetration ability.

A picture of what the munitions look like may help. Here is the US M829A1 Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot, with tracer and combustible casing. The DU penetrator itself is the long, finned, gray dart in the very center. It is shrouded in a black anodized aluminum sabot that seals the 120mm smoothbore gun barrel during firing for propulsion. After leaving the muzzle, the sabot is ripped off by air resistance and the 42mm penetrator is left flying toward its hapless target at over a mile a second. Thus, the DU is not exposed directly when the shell is in storage, nor is it exposed during flight, or unless it hits a hard enough target to strip its polymer sheath. Additionally, when a penetrator misses and burrows into the ground, it goes quite far - remember, these things are designed to penetrate eighteen inches of rolled homogeneous steel armor, so they lance through umpteen feet of earth and rock without a hitch. They bury themselves far and away from the prying hands of poor Iraqi children.



Here is the penetrator and sabot undergoing breakaway after leaving the gun barrel:



And here is a DU round from a 25mm Bushmaster chain gun that I happen to have here, in my room, in a drawer next to me, where it has been for several years. Don't ask me where it's from. That's a 12 inch engineering rule next to it for comparison:



Finally, the World Health Organization of all people report that its military use is not dangerous:
Link

It's no more dangerous than any heavy metal. I now submit that we must ban lead, tantalum, mercury, polonium, and rhenium, for starters.

Friend of mine wrote this.

Originally Posted by Spartiate

Depleted uranium is only very slightly radioactive (hence depleted). Its alleged toxicity would come from its nature as a heavy metal, yet it's still less toxic than substances like mercury or lead.

Honestly, in the quantities used, it's really not that big of an issue. The most significant danger it poses is probably to the personnel that handle it every day.

It still does pose a health issue according to some.They are Un-Ethicall for the soldiers that handle them and the people around the munitions when they are fired. this is not just an issue with the US Army or Russia but more countries....The soldiers who handle it like was mentioned are the most effected by it.

What is Depleted Uranium?

The misnamed 'Depleted' Uranium is left after enriched uranium is separated from natural uranium in order to produce fuel for nuclear reactors. During this process, the fissionable isotope Uranium 235 is separated from uranium. The remaining uranium, which is 99.8% uranium 238 is misleadingly called 'depleted uranium'. While the term 'depleted' implies it isn't particularly dangerous, in fact, this waste product of the nuclear industry is 'conveniently' disposed of by producing deadly weapons.

Depleted uranium is chemically toxic. It is an extremely dense, hard metal, and can cause chemical poisoning to the body in the same way as can lead or any other heavy metal. However, depleted uranium is also radiologically hazardous, as it spontaneously burns on impact, creating tiny aerosolised glass particles which are small enough to be inhaled. These uranium oxide particles emit all types of radiation, alpha, beta and gamma, and can be carried in the air over long distances. Depleted uranium has a half life of 4.5 billion years, and the presence of depleted uranium ceramic aerosols can pose a long term threat to human health and the environment. Depleted Uranium at War

In the 1950's the United States Department of Defense became interested in using depleted uranium metal in weapons because of its extremely dense, pyrophoric qualities and because it was cheap and available in huge quantities. It is now given practically free of charge to the military and arms manufacturers and is used both as tank armour, and in armour-piercing shells known as depleted uranium penetrators. Over 15 countries are known to have depleted uranium weapons in their militaray arsenals - UK, US, France, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Pakistan, Thailand, Iraq and Taiwan - with depleted uranium rapidly spreading to other countries.


Depleted uranium was first used on a large scale in military combat during the 1991 Gulf War, and has since been used in Bosnia in 1995, and again in the Balkans war of 1999.
A sub-commission of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights appointed a 'rapporteur' to investigate the use of depleted uranium weapons among other types of weapons, after passing a resolution which categorised depleted uranium weapons alongside such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, napalm, and cluster bombs as a 'weapon of indiscriminate effect'. Depleted Uranium at Home


Depleted uranium is also used in civilian products. For example, it is used as ballast in aeroplanes (having disastrous consequences in 1992 when an El-Al jet crashed into flats near Amsterdam - depleted uranium was also involved in the recent Stansted Korean Air crash - see CADU News issue 3 for full report). It is also used in some hospital equipment. The alarming Euratom (European Atomic Energy Community) objective which will allow the 'recycling' of low-level radioactive waste in to consumer goods has also raised concerns that depleted uranium may be used in this way. Deadly Recycling

Making weapons and other items out of the waste products of the nuclear business is a very 'convenient', very cheap, but potentially deadly way to get rid of the nuclear waste

What remains is an obsession with proving he is right about the dangers of depleted uranium (DU) weapons. A waste produced from the uranium enrichment process, depleted uranium has become increasingly contentious since American and British militaries first used it in the 1991 Gulf War and, since then, in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Rokke, a health physicist who became the Pentagon's most senior DU expert during the first Gulf War, became convinced it had contaminated the battlefield and could be a factor in Gulf War Syndrome, the mysterious mix of illnesses that have afflicted returning soldiers. Rokke acknowledges DU's brilliance as a weapon - because it is an extremely dense metal that sharpens and burns as it hits its target, it is used on the ends of tank shells and missiles to penetrate steel and concrete much more easily than conventional weapons. But he also believes that he and the research team became contaminated. "Everybody is sick," he says. "We've all got rashes, respiratory and kidney problems. It's there; there are no two ways about it."
Rokke is a military veteran. He joined the US Air Force in 1967 and bombed Vietnam targets "before I could shave". Years later, with a master of science and expertise in environmental health, he was ordered to the Gulf to help protect American soldiers if chemical and biological weapons were used and, later, to oversee DU clean-up. He became convinced DU was causing illnesses such as cancer, and that the Pentagon was downplaying its dangers. When he went public with his views, he was sacked
He is still campaigning, and this week urged the Australian Government, which doesn't allow weapons to be made with DU, to test returning troops for contamination and to campaign for it to be banned globally.
DU is only slightly radioactive - far less than uranium itself - but it is also chemically toxic, and scientists are divided about whether the combination poses a serious or remote health risk to soldiers and civilians who come in contact with it or inhale its dust. Little rigorous research has been done, and Rokke's theories remain unproven.
The official American position is that it is safe. In March, US Army Colonel James Naughton dismissed Iraqi claims that DU weapons caused cancers and leukaemia in children who played around bombed-out tanks and buildings during the first Gulf War. He claimed the real reason Iraq complained about DU weapons was because they were so effective. "Why do they (the then Iraqi government) want it to go away?" Naughton asked. "They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them. There is no doubt DU gave us a huge advantage over their tanks."
In the first Gulf War, most American deaths were from friendly-fire DU weapons. Rokke was ordered to decontaminate shot-up vehicles and tanks and to investigate health effects on troops. Dressed in protective gear and masks, he and his team crawled over tanks and other vehicles, sending some back to the US. Those considered too dangerous to move were buried in a giant hole in the ground.
In the mid-1990s, he was recalled from an academic job to head the Depleted Uranium Project in Nevada, which test-fired weapons into targets to analyse the health risks and to work out how to clean up safely.
Rokke, now 54, is convinced that he and other members of his team in Iraq were contaminated and that the tests he undertook showed that significant amounts of the DU vaporised on impact, making it extremely dangerous when inhaled. He pulls up his trouser leg to reveal the red rash he says appeared within hours of his contact with DU. He holds up his hand and moves fingers clumsily to show that his fine motor skills have gone. He has respiratory problems and cataracts and has medical reports showing that the amount of uranium in his urine is way above acceptable limits.
He has become a campaigner, not just for better clean-up and treatment, but for the weapons to be banned. "After everything I've seen, everything I've done, it became very clear to me that you just can't take radioactive wastes from one nation and just throw it into another nation. It's wrong. It's simply wrong."
Depleted uranium is so cheap and effective - 350 tonnes was used in weapons in the first Gulf War and possibly 500 tonnes in this year's Iraq conflict - that Rokke says the US is reluctant to do proper studies of veterans or Iraqi civilians. "It's the arrogance. Once they acknowledge that there are actual health effects of depleted uranium munitions, then they can't use them any more; the house of cards falls apart."
Rokke, brought to Melbourne by the Victorian Peace Network, has the single-mindedness of a whistleblower. He says he has lost friends, had his house ransacked, had his taxes audited and been publicly vilified for his outspokenness.
Concerns about DU have found some political acceptance - the British Government has announced it will test returning troops for DU contamination. But neither it, nor Washington, plan decontamination in Iraq. In the Australian Senate this week, Democrat Lynn Allison urged the Government to campaign internationally against DU in the same way it does against cluster bombs. Defence Minister Robert Hill said Australian troops in Iraq were not in areas where DU was used, and "there is no conclusive evidence to indicate that ammunition containing depleted uranium poses a significant adverse health risk to (Australian) personnel operating in Iraq".
The scientific evidence is cloudy because there has been so little research. It is broadly accepted that DU does little harm outside the body. But it may cause serious damage if it is inhaled. That means that people near where it is used could be contaminated, and it is possible it could seep into water tables.
Professor Brian Spratt, chairman of the British Royal Society's DU working group, this week told Radio National he welcomed the testing of British troops, because it meant the government "was at least taking the issue seriously, which is a very different attitude to the American military, who seem not to be interested in having any tests for their soldiers".
Spratt acknowledged that the issue was deeply political: the military have reasons for downplaying DU's health effects, and the anti-nuclear lobby have an interest in inflating them.
Rokke has faith he is doing what is right, and he clings to the belief that he is still doing the job the Pentagon ordered him to do. "I didn't ask for this job," he says. "I was given the job, and I'm going to finish the job."

http://www.informationclearinghouse....rticle4439.htm

Can we do anything other than wallow in our own crapulence about it? Nope.

Watch out for those negative spirals. The last step is a doozy...