effects of depleated uranium during the gulf war

I just found this, i cant believe how serious this was, below the video has some very graffic pictures inside as well as very graffic comments of all this. what do you think

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/268098/uranium_weapons_used_in_gulf_war/

1) I hope you notice that this video is not very informative and appeals more to your emotions (the dramatic music is a dead giveaway -- personally, I treat anything using dramatic music as fiction). In fact, the very opening of the video brought my BS-meter to the max. They may or may not be right, but they're way of presenting p**** me off.

2) Depleted Uranium is not more dangerous than other forms of ammunition (if you're not the target). Some links:
http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q746.html
http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q1906.html
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/faq_17apr.htm

3) People get sick, be they soldiers or not. Is the number of cases of a specific illness (not related to combat injuries) in soldiers higher as in the general population? In general, it is found that the illnesses usually shoved into "Gulf War Syndrome" occur as often with Gulf War veterans as other people; sometimes even less. http://www.mod.uk/issues/gulfwar/research/mortality_illhealth.htm

Those are just links I could find quickly; they may or may not be work. If you're not convinced, I'll find better ones.

I would also recommend that you do a search over on JREF forums. There have been a few discussions over the years there, sometimes with very knowledgeable people.

Mmmmm... tasty... J/K... I don't really have a comment. You never know what to believe these days. Don't believe all that you read... see on TV, or find on the internet... did I miss anything? :huh2:

Trust no one. Didn't Mulder say that?

Quite a few people into model railroading have been using depleted uranium for years to add weight to locomotives, especially in N scale, because it is about twice the weight of lead. I never heard any reports of severe illness caused by it.

That video is total BS.

The vehicles with depleted uranium armor, which were hit by depleted uranium ammunition during the Gulf War ("friendly fire"), are being kept at a large government nuclear site. Must be a reason for that.

oldgrandpajack

The toxic effect of depleted uranium is probably more dangerious than the radiological effects. Almost all heavy metals (Uranium is about as heavy as they come) are a poison to the human system. Depleted Uranium decays by alpha emission. External Alpha radiation has very little effect to the human system. However....enternal apha contamination is another story...can cause serious efects.

There aren't any radiologic effects because it's DEPLETED, used up, actually less radioactive than uranium ore naturally occurring in the ground.

The toxicity of the metal itself is less than that of other options like lead, which does cause mental issues. The claims of high birth defects and cancers like leukemia cast a strong doubt on the connection between depleted uranium and the problems these people have because the cancers that uranium causes are well known to the uranium mining industry and those are not on the list of things it can cause. And also the people affected in the mines worked in worse conditions for many years before anything happened to them. Much higher exposure rates to material that was more radioactive than what these people were exposed to.

Lastly many of the pieces of information that are used by people trying to make us look bad are actually completely false. There is a 67% figure floating around out there for birth defects, and if you look up where that came from it's from a single unit that had that rate. One unit, how big is one unit? When you also look at the numbers of other people you find no increase overall in any problems at all. That one unit was either exposed to something much worse, or were a victim of a random clustering. (you do know that when something is completely random it doesn't create just a background noise that is evenly distributed, but creates clumps when you do a statistical analysis. It does not mean that the people in the clump were victims of anything worse than being singled out statistically)

I read extensively on this a few years ago for a friend here in the army and I couldn't find a single piece of real information that was worrying at all. But I did find a lot of people telling horrible stories and pulling numbers out of the air that did not hold up to any kind of even the most basic research into the topic at all.

'Depleted uranium' is a misnomer. It could be called 'partially depleted uranium.' Lead is actually what is left when uranium is depleted.

As one who went through a lot of scare adn mis information about my journey with steroids and medical supervision, which lead me to leaving the wheelchair of 9 years and blindness of 22 years, I too believe its mostly BS.

If this stuff was soo harmful, it would be in the mainstream news. Our troops would have problems with it as well as the military ranks and other countries.

Sub_Umbra said:

'Depleted uranium' is a misnomer. It could be called 'partially depleted uranium.' Lead is actually what is left when uranium is depleted.

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Thats correct actually, if you wait until the sun burns out, about 4.5 billion years I think? half of the uranium here on earth will have turned to lead before it is engulfed in the red giant that our sun will become

What they really mean is that it's had the highly radioactive and fissionably desirable U235 removed, or mostly removed. Leaving just the alpha radiation from the U238 which is easily shielded with a piece of paper. Depleted uranium is something like 6 times better at shielding against other kinds of radiation than lead is, it's used as a radiation shield not a radiation source.

I did try to look up more info on the toxicity of it as just a heavy metal, but I couldn't find anything new. As I mentioned above it can be linked to certain kinds of birth defects and cancers at very high intakes or certain salts and byproducts, but they are not the same as being reported in the above video. Everything else I read just said it was very similar to lead in it's toxicity.

I did learn a couple of new things, like the fact that older 747's and other airplanes actually used it for ballast! I didn't know that. They are phasing it out in modern planes as people are afraid of it even though the only accident that ever happened with a plane carrying it was determined not to have released hardly any at all, certainly not any dangerous amount.

I think you are all missing the point. Yes, depleted uranium is normally inert. But, when it flashes, look out. It flashes pretty easily. Even if you tried to drill, turn, or machine deleted uranium, in the open air, delpleted uranium will flash. If you inhale the "smoke", you're in trouble. Everything around you, will be contmainated also. Just think what happens when a high speed projectile hit's depleted uranium, or the high speed projectile itself is depleted uranium. I suspect quite a few troops, US and Iraqi, inhaled the "smoke", during the Gulf War. That's why the M1A1 tanks, hit during the Gulf War, are stored at Savannah River.

oldgrandpajack

James S said:

...Depleted uranium is something like 6 times better at shielding against other kinds of radiation than lead is...

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Wow! We need some of that for the Umbra bunker!

Depleted Uranium is also used in nuclear weapons (fission-fusion-fission devices). The fission trigger typically uses plutonium, which fissions, providing the energy needed to fuse the tritium. The fused tritium gives off excess neutrons, which are absorbed by the depleted uranium blanket, making it fissionable. I believe that neutron bombs (actually 8" artillary shells) deleted the depleted uranium blanket, thus allowing the excess neutrons to do the dirty work. Also made the neutron bomb a lower yield device, which was thought to be more acceptable for use in crowded urban enviornments, such as the European theater of operations. Don't know if I'd agree with that reasoning, if I lived in Europe.

oldgrandpajack

James S said:

Thats correct actually, if you wait until the sun burns out, about 4.5 billion years I think? half of the uranium here on earth will have turned to lead before it is engulfed in the red giant that our sun will become

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And then it will be safe, right ?

Cliff

The fused tritium gives off excess neutrons, which are absorbed by the depleted uranium blanket, making it fissionable

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yes, it will be turned into plutonium! Thats how breeder reactors work, use the neutrons from the primary reaction to turn this stuff into plutonium.

Almost like magic, turn one thing into another Now, if only they could do it with more useful stuff. Who wants plutonium anyway? Perhaps if we had a lot of it laying around someone would invent a "Mr Fusion" to power the time circuits in my delorian...

James S wrote: Who wants plutonium anyway? Perhaps if we had a lot of it laying around someone would invent a "Mr Fusion" to power the time circuits in my delorian.../QUOTE

I don't know...yoyo'ers seem to like it...
http://www.skilltoys.com/cgi-bin/commerce/index.cgi?cart_id=9154884.21399&pid=700





JM-99







(Yes...it was an April Fool's joke a while back...some people actually thought it was a real product... )

Duncan scoured the world looking for the best material from which to build the Freehand Pu, and settled on Plutonium because of it's strength, durability and pleasant green glow

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NO NO NO! It's NOT green. The glow is BLUE! Just because Homer's reactor is all green doesn't mean that outside of a cartoon it's green. It's a BLUE glow and it's quite beautiful

Pu itself doesn't even glow. The blue glow is Cerenkov radiation inside the water of a pool-type reactor (which probably doesn't even run on Pu, and probably cannot even produce Pu in significant quantities).

Pu and U just look like any other metal. Greyish/silvery, no glow, slightly warm to the touch (which is weird in itself. If I find a piece of metal that's warm without any heat source nearby, I will move myself as far away as possible from it).