Mark Cella What is Depleted Uranium Really?
What is Depleted Uranium and What Are the Dangers? As the Imperialist War Ravages Countries, it Leaves Behind Radioactive Death Which Poisons Generations of Innocents.
What is depleted uranium? Depleted uranium is a waste byproduct from producing fuel for nuclear reactors and atomic bombs. The material used in civil and nuclear military industry is uranium U-235.
Since this isotope is found in very low proportions in nature, the uranium ore has to be enriched, i.e., its proportion of the U-235 isotope has to be industrially increased.
This process produces a large amount of radioactive depleted uranium waste, thus named because it is mainly formed by the other non-fissionable uranium isotope, U-238 and a minimum proportion of U-235.
Mark Cella What is Depleted Uranium Really?
American military industry has been using depleted uranium to coat conventional weaponry (artillery, tanks and aircraft) since 1977, to protect its own tanks, as a counterweight in aircraft and Tomahawk missiles and as a component for navigation instruments.
This is because of depleted uranium having characteristics making it highly attractive for military technology: firstly, it is extremely dense and heavy (1 cm3 weighs almost 19 grams), such that projectiles with a depleted uranium head can penetrate the armored steel of military vehicles and buildings.
The weapon has another characteristic as well; it is a spontaneous pyrophoric material, i.e., it inflames when reaching its target generating such heat that it explodes. After more than 50 years producing atomic weapons and nuclear energy, the USA has 500,000 tons of depleted uranium stored, according to official data.
Depleted uranium is radioactive and has an average lifetime of 4.5 billion years. This is why such waste has to be stored safely for an indefinite period of time, an extremely costly procedure.
Mark Cella on Depleted Uranium
In order to save money and empty their tanks, the Department of Defense and Energy assigns depleted uranium free of charge to national and foreign armament companies. When a projectile hits a target, 70% of its depleted uranium burns and oxidizes, bursting into highly toxic, radioactive micro particles.
A 1995 technical report issued by the Army indicates that “if depleted uranium enters the body, it has the potentiality of causing serious medical consequences. The associated risk is both chemical and radiological.”
Deposited in the lungs or kidneys, uranium 238 and products from its decay (thorium 234, protactinium and other uranium isotopes) give off alpha and beta radiations which cause cell death and genetic mutations causing cancer in exposed individuals and genetic abnormalities in their descendants over the years.
You see the term “depleted” refers to the removal of uranium-235, but the process for its removal is called “enrichment.” It is enrichment because what remains is uranium-238, a highly potent radioactive carcinogen that emits alpha particles.
Mark Cella on Depleted Uranium
Uranium-236 and Uranium-238 (otherwise known as plutonium) is laced into the so-called “depleted” uranium weaponry. So let us be real. Stop saying “depleted” uranium, and call it what it is, “enriched” uranium.
This Orwellian double-speak has a purpose - to make it hard for the public to discern that this is a nuclear war, not a “depleted uranium” war. Enriched uranium weaponry is illegal under the terms and conditions of the Geneva Convention. Under the Geneva Convention, it is illegal to leave harmful materials on a battlefield after the conflict has ceased.
This nuclear war is in violation of the Geneva Convention. It causes congenital malformations, babies born with one eye, no arms, or no brain. And it not only affects Iraqi civilians, it affects American veterans who excrete it in their urine and semen a decade later.
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