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shmem

by shmem (Chancellor)
on Nov 20, 2005 at 20:58 UTC ( [id://510280]=user: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

depleted uranium will take us all.

Americans, stand up.
the DoD and DoE are killing all life on earth
for the short-termed profit of oil companies.

Todesstaub ("Deadly Dust" - german)

A Short Sketch

players: Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Energy (DoE), Ministery of Environment (MoE)
DoD+DoE: Neato...! Uranium, uranium...
DoD: We've got atomic bombs to scare the hell out of that bastard next door.
DoE: ... and electricity!
MoE: Hell, yes! ...wait, I mean... Christ, all that depleted uranium? What d'ya do?
DoD: What?
MoE: It's toxic, radioactive, must be guarded!
DoD+DoE: Let's dump that... somewhere.
MoE: Where? 4.5 billion years half live! Have a safe place for that?
DoD: Ok. Wait... lemme think... (thinks a bit) that's a hard, heavy metal, right?
DoE+MoE: What d'ya think?
DoD: Let's make bullets. We'll scare the hell out of that bastard next door with them.
DoE+MoE: Neato!
DoD and DoE leave the scene, and come back after a while with a bunker buster.
DoD: Let's shoot.
DoE: Wow...! That goes through everything! Even granite! And it burns!
DoD: Yeah! Good blast, eh? And it's gone.
MoE: Ya sure?
DoD: 'course. Much of it burns away. The dust is heavy, settles on the spot. They deserve it. Or gets blown away, vanishes. Gone.

Problem is, it doesn't. Friction while piercing produces uranium attrition which is pyrophoric and burns at 3000-5000° C, resulting in ceramic nanoparticles of uranium oxide, of which 70% have a size below 5 nanometers - in fact a metal gas. The bigger particles settle, the smaller particles keep suspended in the air for a long time. Uranium gas from the 2003 gulf war was detected in England.

The uranium gas is easily inhalated. The unsoluble particles stay in the lung; the soluble particles enter the blood stream and settle in liver, kidneys, bone marrow, gonads, they even pass the mother-child barrier in the placenta. The alpha radiation of uranium, together with its poisonousness, produces cancer, breaks up chromosomes and changes the genetic code of humans, animals, plants. It is not easily washed out of the body.

The use of depleted uranium ammunition created something unprecedented: it makes uranium enter the food chain on a large scale. And it will remain with us. In 4.5 billion years just half of it will be gone. 4.5 billion years - that's roughly the age of our solar system.

Chernobyl was an accident. The use of depleted uranium ammunition is a crime, perhaps the biggest perpetrated by the military-industrial complex of the US - or is worse to be expected?

Ah, and 9/11? read Collateral Damage. Got that from Fefe's blog, wherein this document is linked.


My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Arrow of Reflection. What's yours?

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