Depleted Uranium: It’s all around you!
January 24th, 2008
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I’m really getting sick and tired of all the crap out there about how depleted uranium is poisoning everyone from US soldiers to Iraqi and Afghan civilians. Just searching for it on youtube, for example, shows a real lot of bull that lacks any basis in science. There are not enough websites or other information sources out there which are actually providing an accurate message about the toxicity of this material, which is pretty well established in science and has been for some time.
I’d like to point out that depleted uranium is not exactly limited to weapons of war and thus I’ve created a list of civilian and consumer products which make use of the same material which many claim is so deadly. Many of these products contain only small amounts of DU, but remember: According to the critics, just living in an area downwind from where DU has been used can have major health effects. Thus, if these claims are to believe, then one must consider depleted uranium so dangerous that even exposure to micrograms quantities is highly dangerous.
Depleted uranium is really not much different than “natural” uranium. The only difference is that it is nearly 100% uranium-238, while naturally occurring uranium is about 99.2% U-238, .7% U-235 and about .1% U-233, U-234 and other isotopes. It’s chemically identical and slightly less radioactive than natural uranium. Depleted uranium has replaced natural uranium in most non-nuclear applications. It’s a byproduct material but not really “waste.”
It would be fair to include natural uranium sources which someone is likely to encounter on a regular basis. These include numerous minerals as well as products ranging from kitty litter to other mineral-based products, which contain small, but significant amounts of uranium. However, since it’s “Depleted Uranium” that seems to get everyone up in arms, this list is limited to items which contain depleted uranium which was intentionally added to the product.
Non-Military Items Which Contain Depleted Uranium:
Ceramics:
Most well known is “Fiestaware” which used uranium-based (depleted after the 1940’s) pigments in the orange/red glaze on the popular dinnerware until the line ended production in 1973. However, depleted uranium pigments were common in many ceramic glazes and are still occasionally used in ceramics, although other, synthetic glazes are now more common. It is estimated there are up to two million uranium-glazed plates, cups and bowls still in the cupboards of Americans. There is no need for concern, as the possible leaching of uranium into foods is insignificant. More info…
Green-Colored Glass:
Uranium compounds have been used in colored glass since at least the 1830’s and continue to be used to produce a fluorescent green color which cannot be achieved by other means. It is commonly known as “Vaseline glass” and was extremely popular in the 1920’s and 1930’s. It can be found in vases, lamp bases and other decorative items. It also is common in marbles, which continues to be a popular application of the glass. Since 1959 production of vaseline glass has used depleted uranium. Antique uranium glass is prized by collectors, but the product continues to be manufactured by a few companies. Uranium glass is commonly used for decorative purposes, stained glass sculptures and neon light tubes. The bright green color and florescent qualities make this glass especially unique. You may have a few uranium marbles in your old toybox and not even realize it. More info…
Semiconductors Components:
Uranium dioxide is a semiconductor which has a “band gap” between silicon and germanium. Although it is not as common as other materials in electronic components, it is not unusual to find depleted uranium oxide used in specialty diodes, transistors and other components. It is less commonly used in integrated circuits and is not generally used in memory chips, because the mild radioactivity of the material can contribute to errors and data corruption. It has been investigated as a possible component of new high effeciency solar cells. High concentrations of depleted uranium may be found in some zener diodes, high power transistors and solid state voltage regulators.
Dentures:
Since the 1940’s, uranium and later depleted uranium was used in producing the glazes and pigments for porcelain dentures. The actual amount added is relatively small and is only one component of the coloring of the dentures. Uranium was chosen because it has a subtle fluorescent quality and aids in creating a natural looking “glow” and color to the false teeth. Thousands of such dentures were made in the United States and elsewhere during the 20th century. Most manufacturers discontinued the use of depleted uranium in glazes, in favor of cheaper standardized compounds in the mid to late 1980s. There may be some who still use depleted uranium compounds and there are likely still depleted-uranium containing dentures being worn. Although the amount contained is relatively small it is certainly larger than one might expect come in contact with while living in an area where depleted uranium munitions had been used in the past. More info…
Radiation Shielding:
In addition to being slightly radioactive, depleted uranium is an excellent radiation shielding material, due primary to it’s high density. For this reason it may be found in radioactive waste and source storages casks, such as those which may be used in research or medical applications. The application where citizens are most likely to encounter depleted uranium is in shielding for x-ray equipment. Most x-ray equipment found in dentists and other low-power x-ray sources are likely to use lead or tungsten for shielding, but for CT scans and other high power x-ray or specialty imaging applications, depleted uranium is a common material used for shielding. It may also be found in the mechanism used to focus narrow beams of x-rays for high resolution imaging. Reportedly, some airport and security x-ray machines contain depleted uranium both to focus the x-ray beam and provide general purpose shielding.
Photography:
In the early 1800’s, uranium nitrate was a commonly used chemical for producing photographs. The chemical is photosensative and can be used in creating both negative plates and the final prints of photographs. It was a very common ingredient in many photographic emulsions for much of the 1800’s. Photographs which rely primary on uranium nitrate or other uranium salts are commonly known as “Uranotype.” Although silver compounds largely began to replace uranium for photographic use by the 1880’s, the use of uranyl nitrate in photographic chemicals continued due to it’s ability to enhance contrast and provide a rich red or brown color to the print. Today, uranotype photographs are still made as collectibles and to recreate the look and feel of old photographs. The material used in modern uranotypes is made from depleted uranium. Natural uranium would have been the basis for uranium nitrate prior to World War II. More info…
Laboratory Uses:
Depleted uranium can be found in a number of chemicals which are commonly used in chemistry, biology and analytical laboratories. Uranyl acetate is the most common “staining” chemical used for imaging of organic structures with an electron microscope. It is also used as an indicator in some analytical tests. Uranyl nitrate and uranium oxide are also common in both biological and chemistry laboratories where they may be used as a catalyst for decomposing organic compounds or as a means of binding sulfur or other materials from hydrocarbons. It is also used to destroy volitile organic compounds and in the process of partial oxidation of chemicals. If you ever took a chemistry class, it’s likely there were a few uranium-based chemicals in the back cabinet. Modern uranium chemicals are all made with depleted uranium.
Counterweights:
Due to it’s high density, depleted uranium has been used for counterweights, especially in the aerospace industry. Adding small amounts of depleted uranium to parts of an aircraft can help keep it properly balanced. It has been used in a variety of military and civilian aviation applications, including many airliners. In recent years, depleted uranium counterweights have become less common in new aircraft in favor of tungsten, which is easier to machine, less prone to corrosion and often less expensive. However, depleted uranium does continue to be used on some occasions and thousands of passenger and military aircraft remain flying with depleted uranium counterweights on board.
Future uses: Uranium (generally depleted) has been researched as a possible material for use in rechargeable batteries, as a catalyst in destroying certain chemical waste, as a component of solar panels and as chemical in various hydrogen-production methods. Rechargeable batteries are probably the most likely candidate for depleted uranium in a consumer product in the immediate future. When combined with other chemicals, uranium oxides can produce batteries with a high energy density and a relatively long lifespan.
Buy Depleted Uranium: Yes, you can buy it. It’s not illegal to own a relatively small amount of DU (under several kilos). At least it’s not in the United States where it’s considered an “insignificant source”in most circumstances. Radioactive substances are often measured in “Curies” which denotes the activity of a quantity of material. Radium 226 is about one gram per curie. Strontium-90 is a several milligrams as is cesium-137. Uranium-238 is close to three tons per curie.
DU metal can be acquired from:
United Nuclear in small quantities
As a larger “slab” from Eberline Services (note: it’s rather expensive because it’s intended as a calibration and check standard)
Occasionally on ebay a good sized sample shows up
Compounds:
Uranyl Acetate from the Lab Depot (expensive because it’s analytical grade)
Uranyl Acetate from Gallad Chemical
Uranyl Acetate from Spi-Chem (cheaper)
Uranyl Nitrate from Spi-Chem
Uranium Oxides from Reade
And of course, uranium-containing photographs, ceramics, glassware and other items are avaliable from eBay, collectibles and antiques shops, flea markets and elsewhere.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 10:45 am and is filed under Bad Science, Depleted Cranium, Good Science, History, Nuclear, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 1st, 2008 at 1:37 am
U-238 decays with an alpha into Th-234. It then decays with a half life of 24 days by beta into Pa-234, which decays with a half life of 6 hours by beta into U-234. Betas are easy to detect with a geiger counter. At least one of these decays also gives off gamma rays.
Also remember that a random sample of the earth’s crust has about 3 parts per million of natural uranium, along with the entire decay chain including radon and radium all the way to lead.
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July 1st, 2008 at 1:47 am
Well, depleted uranium is toxic and nobody will tell you otherwise. Generally the radiation produced by it is not the concern. The reason being that it is relatively low and does not tend to penetrate much into tissue. If you consumed enough uranium to have a real issue with the radiation, you’d probably be dead due to the chemical toxicity. The radiation is a bit deceptive especially when you get a probe that close to it. I could show you some rocks in my back yard that register very high when the probe is right ontop of them.
Now as far as the chemical toxicity, it’s one of the more run-of-the-mill heavy metals. It’s about as toxic as lead, but that’s an imperfect analog. Lead tends to cause damage to the nervous system. Uranium, seems to be less neurotoxic, but it does have more of an effect on the kidneys, at least in high enough exposure, the kidneys seem to have some trouble eliminating it from the body.
But going back to the lead analogy, it’s similar in the it’s pretty rare to see major health effects from an accute exposure. You can handle lead. You can touch bullets and solder and that kind of thing. You should make a habbit of washing your hands, but in general it’s not going to hurt you as long as you don’t go eat some. on the other hand the hazard comes from (especially little kids) exposed to it constantly. This is a chronic hazard, not an acute one, which is from the substance building up in the body over time. The Romans all walked around with lead poisoning and they went nuts… but it took years of exposure to do that.
On the other hand, people act like depleted uranium dust is more potent than bocholism extract. A single speck of lead dust from a bullet that was fired somewhere is hardly reason to panic. The same is true of DU. The claims of dust traveling miles and poisoning people are quite inflated and the symptoms tend to not correspond with what is claimed.
Another factor is the issue of mobility in the enviornment. Ranges are an example of a situation where you have an enormous amount of amo fired in the same area, generally over decades. Lead is a concern in ranges too as is uranium. Both are metals that are found in nature, but when you unload large amounts of them into an area there can be issues depending on the local geology and other factors. The acidity of the soil plays a roll as does the wetness of the area. Areas where there is very acidic soil, a lot of rain fall and a high water table are the kind of places where heavy metals can be leached into water supplies and local aquafirs.
To keep this in context we need to remember that the weapons we shoot in a war contain a lot of lead, which far more common that uranium. They also contain mercury in some cases or cadmium used in various alloys. There are also a lot of components in aerospace and weapons that use beryllium. Beryllium dust does about what uranium does to the lungs – only many times worse.
No, i’d not tell you it’s 100% safe to let your kids play with it. I have some. I’ve touched it. I wash my hands before I eat anyway, but for sure when I touch something like that. If I didn’t, what would happen? Probably nothing. But if I made a habbit of that I might find my kidneys are under a bit more of a load.
There are some issues here. The claims that DU is a “nuclear weapon” are really ridiculous, and in the grand scheme of things if we start obsessing over one of the relatively low toxicity materials on the battlefield, then the risk is that there’s a disproportional concern which leads to bigger problems not being addressed.
I’ll get some more citable data soon. I’m sorry but it’s a tad bit late and I would like to hit the hay soon.
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July 1st, 2008 at 1:59 am
I noticed your name indicates you’re from Hawaii? I assume what you’re talking about refers to a large number of W-54 dummy warheads which were fired off in the 1960’s during practice missions and training. I’m not so sure about the circumstances, but I’ll try to find some documents relating to that and other information.
I suppose I can see how Hawaii would be a somewhat unique situation in that you’re dealing with potentially very sensitive and pristine habitat that is very unique and worth preserving from human activity. You also have soil that is potentially highly organic and acidic and with a lot of biological activity. The area, I assume, probably gets a real lot of rain too.
In that case, there very well might be some good reason to pick up any of the junk left over from military activities. Don’t panic though!
Here’s some information sources I found a while ago: http://depletedcranium.com/?p=363
I’ll try to be more helpful when I’m not half asleep. We also get at least two health physicists who pop in here from time to time. If you’d like to hear from a real expert I’ll try to get a hold of one of them.
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July 1st, 2008 at 2:08 am
Hi, Hawaiian Honey.
Paul is right about the U238 decay chain, though the specific activity (the number of transformations or decays per unit mass per unit time) of U238 is pretty low. Most alpha and beta transformations have associated gamma rays. Often these are not given much attention with isotopes that are primarily of concern as internal contaminants. There are a couple of good reasons for this. The first is that if the alpha particle has energy in the mega-electron volt (MeV) range and the gamma is in the kilo-electron volt (KeV) range, the energy of the alpha is clearly of greater interest. Also, though it may seem counter-intuitive, gammas from inside the body are less likely to have interactions with cells than gammas from a source outside the body (the reason is that there are, on the average, only about half as many cells that are in the pathway before the gamma is out of the body.
In any event, these gammas can be picked up with a Geiger counter (or GM tube, as it is usually called in the biz.) Additionally, as alphas and betas interact with atoms and shed their energy, some of it moves electrons into higher orbital shells, and when they drop back down to the ground state an x-ray is produced. As with the gammas, these are of less interest/concern, usually, than the alpha or beta that triggered them. All the energy of the x-rays is accounted for in the listed energy of the original decay. The x-rays also can be detected by some GM tubes.
As to soil becoming irradiated and thus radioactive, the short answer is, “no.” The long answer is also no, but involves discussions of neutron activation, spontaneous fission decay rates, exceptions due to extremely high gamma fluxes and electron traps and meta-stable states, followed by statistical analysis of each pathway to show that at no point is there a chance that it will be a factor of interest.
As to the mobility of uranium in soil, there is an excellent discussion in the archive of Radsafe, which I would encourage you to look up. I would caution that it is rather complex, and includes a fair amount of uncertainty.
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July 1st, 2008 at 2:29 am
Hawaiian_Honey said:
Since you claim to want to learn, I apologize for my strident tone, you must understand that most that come here to challenge the lead article are normally pushing a biased POV.
You have to understand the politics of research to properly interpret that final paragraph. Researchers that find nothing and conclude there is nothing more to find, don’t get funding the next time they stick their hand out. At the same time they are compelled by the rules of science to report the facts. What you see there is, in the part I quoted, the factual conclusion of the study: nothing there. The rest of it is to keep the money flowing for the next study. The bottom line is that they didn’t find anything.
Now there are several other flaws in that study, notably the lack of controls, and the small size of the cohort, plus some other more subtle ones I won’t bother to list.
You also reference the Royal Society reports of 2001 and 2002, but neglect to mention the depleted uranium (DU) report published, February 2007 by them which was a study of DU in the urine of veterans from the Gulf War and the Balkans which showed no sign of DU, and concluded any battlefield exposures were low and unlikely to cause health effects.
BTW, I find it surprising that an ex ‘rad tech for the Navy’ would not understand the difference between a measurement of radiative flux and dosimetry, but I’ll let that pass…
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July 1st, 2008 at 2:40 am
Mike B said:
I’m actually planning on putting out a post – which I might do tomorrow now that this has come up, about how uranium and some other radionucleotides tend to be overrepresented by simple GM tubes. It’s an issue of energy response. Uranium and the decay produces happen to be of an energy which is at the higher sensitivity region of many tubes. Of course, this is why we have energy compensated tubes, which are somewhat better – although for really good measurements a gas proportional detector is going to be better anyway when used with a good spectrometer – that’s more complicated a setup though.
Uh… the answer is No. Lets leave it at that. Really, I mean we’re talking about uranium-238 here, not a big chunk of californium-252. How often do you get a neutron from spontaneous fission out of a U-238 slug? Not too often. It’s barely even worth mentioning. Also, you’re not going to get any kind of gamma radiation that would cause photoneutron reactions or anything, except perhaps from the odd cosmic ray once in a blue moon.
The answer is no. Putting something radioactive near soil will not make it radioactive. Never would that happen from DU. Only in the most extraordinary circumstances of neutron radiation or some kind of a very high energy particle accelerator would that ever come into play.
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July 1st, 2008 at 2:55 am
You are right, of course, but I’ve just been in a big discussion of this on Radsafe, and wanted to avoid the, “Ah, but you didn’t mention (fill in the blank), which means you are hiding something!” From several sources it appears that the specific activity for SF in U238 is about one per minute per gram. This doesn’t lead to much of an activation production.
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July 1st, 2008 at 4:17 am
Just want to mention: I edited the above post, not changing the content but fixing a problem with the quote tag.
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July 1st, 2008 at 4:23 am
Thanks drbuzz0, Paul & Mike B for your graciousness and forthright answers. My belief in human dignity is once more reaffirmed. I will await more discussions later. You are right about the practice rounds on one of the more beautiful areas that is not open to the public. Hawaiians would like to get access to some of these areas and we have many archeological sites that are on the ranges. The watershed protection area is right above the area that is literally peppered with the practice rounds. Within the practice range area is one of the major drainages that leads to the ocean, so yes, I have a great concern for the environment as one of the prolific reefs is just below the range. In short, the range is sandwiched between two very important sections of the `ahupua`a (pie shaped valley system that goes from mountain to sea) ecosystem. More on that later, but the wash off and the effects of DU in the soil is a concern of mine.
I know you are all talking about U 238, but my concern is the U 235, although miniscule amounts could have the possibility of affecting the soils as it sits for 50+ years. I may be an alarmist, but we want to be able to get back to those sites and take our children to experience them. The clean-up is not going for 100% and that is understandable $$$$, but from the health standpoint, I want to be sure before I start advocating that we allow these visits to our sites. I am still not sure about the ingestion part though. I realize that one speck of dust is not going to have an effect, but when we go to a site that has a lot of specks, (thank goodness it is too heavy to go airborne) I know why eating on the range is prohibited. I have tried to look up some of what is on the web, and I will continue this discussion with some of the physicists that will be working on the project. I will also visit Radsafe as suggested. Thank you for that tip.
Oh yeah, I am now in my second career as an archeologist. The rad tech lasted only 5 years like 15 years ago, enough to see that I hated refueling submarines. Once you see people get contaminated, you don’t want to go through that yourself. I much rather do this.
dear diviate, just because there are those who push their own biases, just as you do, there is never a reason to be arrogant or unfriendly. No one here has been unkind to anyone except you. Even those who did not agree with you still treated you with a degree of dignity. Also, the 2007 study is the first link I put in and the reference to the 2001 and 2002 study is from the 2007 study. They reiterate their original conclusion. I have spent time reading the studies because my concern is the health issue for people that I would like to take to the sites that I work on. I also have a my own personal concerns for my own personal health. I am not taking any of this lightly and neither am I pushing my own biases point of view because I have none. My concern for the health issues are real. The Hawaiian population has many health issues. We have the highest incidence of diabetes and heart disease. We have the lowest incidence of cancer, but we have the highest death rate from cancer. In other words, when we do get cancer, we die. We do not have a high survival rate. So please, just leave me alone.
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July 1st, 2008 at 5:39 am
Hey Mike B, Paul and drbuzz0,
I was also looking for any indication as how forest fires affect DU, physically, chemically would any of you know? The range is set on fire once a year. It burns for days to clear the vegetation so that we can clean the range. This large practice range is set ablaze, between the watershed protection area and the lowlands above the ocean. And you have to remember this has been going on for some years.
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July 1st, 2008 at 6:21 am
You know what Hawaiian_Honey? I don’t believe a word you say about yourself. Your claims about your careers ring false, as does your style of writing, which seems forced. In fact I smell B.S. all over your comments.
I’ll be keeping a eye on this thread.
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July 1st, 2008 at 12:23 pm
U-235? Well, there is some U-235 in depleted uranium, but the amounts are very very tiny, considerably less than in natural uranium. The amounts would be insignificant compared to the uranium which exists in nature, which is low to begin with.
I don’t see why it would be any cause for concern anyway. It’s chemically identical to U-238 and although it is somewhat more radioactive, it’s still not that hot.
U-235 in DU is just a tiny trace and you’d have more of it in many rocks in the area if you looked for them. It’s not a rare mineral or anything.
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July 1st, 2008 at 12:47 pm
If you want an easy way to monitor post comments, I’ve been working on a page to provide recent comments and other information at a glance. Here’s the alpha version of it: http://www.depletedcranium.com/whatshot.php
I was going to put a link to it after it is finished within the next few days but I’m putting it up now to make it easy to keep track of new comments on archived posts.
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July 1st, 2008 at 4:18 pm
drbuzz0 said:
I don’t think that uranium is present in our basaltic rock. I know that it is in granitic and other metamorphic/continental rock, but not in basalt. I have read on the amount of U-238 vs. U-235 in DU as well as the process of enrichment for reactor fuel and how so much of it has to be removed, blah blah blah, but still, it is that thin chance that we are being questioned. Especially because of the renal toxicity that is a concern to veterans and diabetes, another kidney disease, is so rampant in the Hawaiian community.
Anyway, you are right, it is not that hot. It won’t burn you, it won’t cause your hair to fall out and it certainly won’t kill you, it won’t even give you slight nausea. So any idea on how fire affects DU? I haven’t found any info on that. Maybe one of the physicists on the project can get a good paper out of it.
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July 1st, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Hawaiian_Honey said:
That would depend very much on the physical and chemical form the uranium is in. When a uranium round strikes something a portion will burn, and uranium can burn to an oxide from heat, but in general a solid slug would get an oxide coating on it pretty fast and I do not believe a fire would result in complete oxidation of the uranium. In general, uranium is prone to oxidation anyway so you usually end up with oxides after it’s been in the enviornment for a while. But again, this depends on the physical nature. If it’s a big solid chunk it might not go that deep into it.
As for renal failure, I’d have to look at the numbers but, yes that is the largest health concern from uranium in general. That having been said, it takes a fair amount in the body to cause this and it tends to not be absorbed that well in most forms. Uranium poisoning and the associated renal failure that might go along with it would be something you might be concerned about in those who work with the stuff constantly or drink from water which comes out of an aquifer with a lot of uranium in it.
Elevated levels have been found in those who deal with munitions, on a few occasions, but they’ve been limited and the levels are only “elevated” in so far as they are above average – not into the danger region.
The materials data and safety sheets on the material are a pretty good guide for how you should deal with it. This stuff is not so potent a toxin that you need to take any unusual precautions – we don’t need everyone walking around in moon suits.
Just think of something like lead. Lead is found in solder, fishing weights, bullets etc etc. When I solder something I handle it with my bare hands. I don’t worry about it too much. I’ll pick up a fishing weight or a bullet too. Would I put it in my mouth? Certainly not. Would I eat while handling it? No. I wouldn’t huff the dust if I were grinding it either. And I’d wash my hands before I eat, but I do that anyway.
If anything the lead analogy is probably flawed in that uranium seems to be less toxic overall and less prone to uptake in both metallic and oxide forms.
Obviously we’re in contact with stuff every day that could kill us if we ate enough of it or injected it into the blood steam – or at least they could be damaging. It’s nothing to freak out about.
If you’re planning on picking up chunks of uranium, gloves are probably not 100% necessary, but they might be a good idea anyway, as when picking up any debris in nature. A respirator and approperate ventilation would be warranted if you plan on grinding the stuff or cutting it – that requires some precautions, not much unlike beryllium does. Gloves would probably be a good idea for any kids involved, as they tend to put their hands in their eyes/mouths and stuff.
Here’s some good information on the toxicity: http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q1906.html
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July 1st, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Hawaiian_Honey said:
Forest fires are very unlikely to have any effect on fragments of DU, as I doubt the fire is hot enough to melt or burn the uranium. There will likely be some resuspention of fine particles, but they will again settle out, and in order to breath them you would have to be so close to the fire that you have more immediate health risks, such as smoke inhalation or burning.
From an activity point of view, the reduction of U234 in the process of going from natural uranium (Unat) to depleted uranium is more important than the reduction of U235. in Unat the activity of U234 is almost the same as the activity of U238 (referred to as “being in equalibrium), even though on a weight basis there is about 20,000 times as much U238 (it has to do with the differance in half-life, or more accurately specific activity). The reduction of U234 in DU is about as great as the reduction in U235. This is why DU is about 60% as radioactive as the same mass of Unat.
U235 is useful in reactors and weapons because it is “fissile”, which means it is fairly likely to split when hit by a neutron going the right speed. U235 produces almost no neutrons unless fissioned (7E-9% of the decays of U235 are spontainious fission, as opposed to about 5.5% of the decays in U238). The U235 in DU is seriously not a problem.
You might want to contact the geology department of the University of Hawaii and ask if they have some numbers for the uranium contatent of the rocks there. I am confident it is not zero.
Something to consider about the firing range: In my State (Washington) there is at least one old (WWII and Korean War era) “impact area” that the local environmental groups advocate NOT be “cleaned up”. The reasons is fairly simple: (1) Clean-up would involve more environmental damage than leaving things as they are, and (2) Cleaning up the area would leave it vulnerable to being controlled by people who want to exploit it for development or something else that will perminantly damage the ecosystem. In our area it is developers, who would love to have taxpayers pay for clean-up, so they can convince the local government that “the highest and best use” is to let them slap condos on it.
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July 1st, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Obviously the fire doesn’t melt the DU; it is still there after all of the burns every year. I was just wondering if there would be some chemically altered state it goes into. Even if there is some resuspension, I suspect that the weight of it will not make it go very far. I don’t want it in our ocean and our food chain. I know you say there is not much to worry about, but if DU is there, then so is the mercury and lead. But then again, there is that story of the bombing of Yugoslavia, then the big wind, then DU found in England 9 days later:-) How’s that for travel? I may have my countries wrong, but you get the gist.
drbuzz0 thanks for the tip on U toxicity. It is interesting to know that U was used to treat diabetes. I wanted to do some research online, but online is crowded w/ DU causes global epidemic of diabetes. I’ll go to UH to get some papers on the subject.
Mike, it is an interesting take on prefering to leave the DU there to cleaning it up. I take it there is also UXO or unexploded ordnance involved. This would effectively keep everyone out. Also, I put the question about the uranium in our basalt to Dr. West. He does a lot of sourcing for much of the stone tools throughout the Pacific. Since he looks at the chemical signitures of a lot of rocks, I think he would know. I will let you know what he says.
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July 1st, 2008 at 10:39 pm
I’m wondering if a forest fire would have any effect, because if these were shot into the brush, then they’re so heavy they may be embedded in more than a foot of dirt and mud. In that case especially the fire would probably not really do much to the rounds. It would take more than a few licks of a flame to do anything to a chunk of uranium anyway.
One issue as to any dispersal would be knowing the physical nature of exactly what the rounds or material is. I believe some was (if I recall correctly) just to add weight to some unarmed dummy rounds. In that case, my question would be whether it’s encased inside some other material and how large it would be. That would not really do much other than sit there in one big chunk, as opposed to something that was fragmentary.
Still, I’d not be especially concerned either way of any major health effects. But if this area was a firing range and live bombs or other explosive weapons were used, then that would concern me far more than any uranium. It’s not unknown for ordience from WWII to sit dormant through the years until someone digs it up and accidentally sets it off. That’s something I would not mess around with at all. If you suspect that at all, make sure that the area is properly cleared by those equipped to deal with that (the bomb squad or an explosives disposal group).
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July 1st, 2008 at 11:17 pm
drbuzz0 said:
We go out with UXO clearance people and we have to take HAZWOPER classes. We dress in flak jackets and hike in the hot sun with all that equipment. I prefer not to wear all that stuff because if something does go off around us, I would rather blow up than be a twitching torso. Ha!! How’s that picture? We are going through the process of clearance and some stuff is always left behind, but the idea is that most of it has been cleared. So in some places we don’t have to hike with flak anymore.
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July 1st, 2008 at 11:23 pm
There is almost no uranium in basaltic rock, as a quick Google search will tell you, also the very low background radon signature indicates that there isn’t much naturally occurring uranium from any source in the Hawaiian archipelago.
Digs of any sort in military live-fire ranges are very unusual and generally need to happen under military supervision, and given that these areas are also federal preserves, would likely require a full environmental impact study, and a health and safety study which would cover all aspects of the project including any hazards like this.
I find it strange that someone who is claiming to be an ex-navy rad-tech that used to be involved in refueling reactors is: one, displaying such a profound ignorance of the basics, given that the U.S Navy is recognized all over the world for the quality of their training, and two, would be coming here for more information on the subject, instead of Radsafe for example.
I also find it strange that someone claiming to be an archeologist would come to ask these questions of a bunch of nobodies – certainly your training as a scientist would drive you to consult primary sources.
I think you are a fraud, and trying to Trojan horse an anti DU agenda into this discussion.
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July 3rd, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Hey Mike,
sorry Dr. West has not gotten back to me yet but when he does I will let you know what he says. I would like to know more about the Washington site tho. My brother lives in Lynnwood about 50 miles N of Seattle and I get over to visit him every so often. Does the site also have UXO on it? Because if it does, why would the presence of DU on the site stop developers from building on the land? So you don’t clean up the DU, but it is the presence of UXO that would be the deciding factor would it not? Developers will never build on this impact area in Hawaii because it will never be 100% cleared of UXO. Too much impact over the years. Besides, we are going to construct targets out there for the SBCT.
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July 4th, 2008 at 3:33 am
Hi, Honey.
The old impact site is a wetland area on Whidbey Island (Your brother will know where that is). There is no DU there (as far as I know), but potentially UXO. It is also the site of a big rookery of some kind of bird (I don’t remember what kind). The place was used so long ago that there are major trees all through it that would make finding and recovering UXO expensive, difficult, ecologically devistating, and perhaps not successful. Almost everyone is willing to let this sleeping dog lie.
Two other places of interest are Fort Lewis and the Yakima firing range. The Army does tank manuvers at Fort Lewis all the time, and they fire their guns, but they are supposed to use only practice rounds. If someone said that some DU has been used and not accounted for, I would be neither surprised nor concerned (I live about five miles away from parts fo the Fort).
Yakima Firing Range is where they take the tanks to shoot the real thing. there is undoubtedly both DU and UXO out there, and probably in largish quantities. I hope they never decide to do a clean-up there, as it would be hugely expensive and fairly dangerous. I would list the dangers in order of importance as (1) UXO, (2) Heat issues (it gets really hot in the summer), (3) gravity hazards (the land has a lot of things you could fall off of, or that could fall on you, (4) rattlesnakes (big ones, and lots of them). DU doesn’t make the list of Dangers, though it might make things worse if people have to work in anti-contamination garb. I, personally, have no interest in such a clean-up project, as the weather really is not nice.
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July 4th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I don’t think we are going to be wearing anything really special for residual DU collection. If we do I will let you know but so far no one has said anything. I expect to be wearing gloves but full body garb is unwarranted since we did the survey last summer and didn’t have to wear anything. There were some slugs sitting on the surface and we step over them and get frisked to check if we have anything on us at the end of the day, but that was it. Besides, we are on the range a lot doing site protective measures in between projects and we are not told we have to wear anything. If troops are out there doing maneuvers, it would be inconsistent to have to wear it for clearance.
Over the last few years there has been a UXO clearance project in which the EOD’s go out there. Some things are blown in place, some are removed to another site, up to the EOD guys. They are the experts. We are clearing some places in Makua. If you keep up with these things you will know that Kaho`olawe has been turned over to Hawaii State although there has not been a 100% clearance of all UXO. I don’t believe that there is any DU there. I never saw any the last time I was there. It has been decided that the DU at PTA or Pahakuloa Training Area will not be cleared. I don’t know if the reaction to that decision is what has brought about the Hawaii Island County Council making a resolution to get the Army to stop using live rounds there. There has been community meetings all this week on Hawaii Island for that issue.
Rattlesnakes in Yakima? I thought it would be too far north. WOW. I don’t know what the Yakima Firing Range looks like, but I would think that there is a lot of brush out there but not many big trees since they need to keep those down and they get blown up anyway after so many years. As I said before, they burn ours every year and lots of UXO get exploded when heated. The gulches never get cleared because there is too much wet vegetation in the gulches so that it is dangerous. Gulches are just off limits for all of us unless we absolutely have to do a survey in one of them. So far I have been in only one of them and that was when a lot of the underbrush had died back.
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July 5th, 2008 at 7:14 am
Mike B
Your comments about firing ranges in Washington State are inaccurate. The Army is not licensed to fire DU kinetic energy penetrator rounds in training in the United States. You may confirm this by asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the Army’s licenses. The first time that tankers in the Gulf War fired actual DU rounds was in Saudi Arabia before the start of Desert Storm. Fort Lewis is the home of what armored division? I had thought it was an Infantry, not Armored post. If you have made misstatements purely of a speculative nature, I ask that you have the site owner remove them since this blog has become a source of generally accurate information with regards to depleted uranium and we do not want any material of a refutive nature to be innaccurate or speculative. Please, write to me and we can discuss this. Thank you.
Roger
Mike B said
“The old impact site is a wetland area on Whidbey Island (Your brother will know where that is). There is no DU there (as far as I know), but potentially UXO.”
This impact site was used when and by what type of aircraft or unit? DU is only fired by certain types of aircraft and by certain tanks. If this impact site has not been used since 1970, there categorically is no DU there. This is a Navy base, not Army base and the Navy has only used DU with the Phalanx close-in shipboard defense system (all newly manufactured rounds since about 1991 have been tungsten because this 20mm gun system does not engage armored targets and DU is not required to shoot down a thin skinned sea skimming missile or engage a fast moving small boat)
“Two other places of interest are Fort Lewis and the Yakima firing range. The Army does tank manuvers at Fort Lewis all the time, and they fire their guns, but they are supposed to use only practice rounds. If someone said that some DU has been used and not accounted for”
What tanks have used this range? What units? Infantry divisions do not have tanks. They may have Bradley Fighting Vehicles and they may have Stryker Vehicles, but those are not tanks. If DU had been used, it would not be unaccounted for. Go look at what happened when 2 Marine Harrier aircraft accidentally strafed Vieques target areas with DU 25mm penetrator munitions. There is a considerable record in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ADAMS public document retrieval system. Just go to http://www.nrc.gov – Electronic Reading Room, ADAMS, and put in key word “Vieques”.
“Yakima Firing Range is where they take the tanks to shoot the real thing. there is undoubtedly both DU and UXO out there”
You make the claim “undoubtedly there is DU out there”. What is the basis of that claim? Was the Davey Crockett system deployed to Ft Lewis or test rounds fired at Yakima? No DU tank rounds were expended there.
Roger Helbig
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July 5th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Roger, how long has the firing ranges, of which there is a question, been in use. The DU in Hawaii is before 1970 and has been used as practice rounds. I am not the ordnance expert, but what I was told is that the DU was used in practice rounds. It was used to simulate the weight of the mortar, I forget which one, because of the similar mass, it would produce the same trajectory and therefore, the same distance and accuracy. So the use of DU would not be for kinetic energy perpetrator rounds, just simulated practice rounds way prior to 1970. I don’t think it has to just be certain DU tank rounds to have DU expended there. It could be like Hawaii.
Isn’t Fort Lewis part of the 25th or 27th Division? I can see where it would be used in a similar fashion to Schofield Barracks and PTA. It is one of the target places for the Stryker Transformation. I recall that it is, and has been, part of the Light Brigade as is Schofield Barracks and PTA. Our Tropic Lightning (which name has recently changed) is tied in with Fort Lewis. We always get people going back and forth between the two. Hmmm, I need to find out the organization flow there. We share commanding offices (not sure of the term) somehow. It’s true that there are no tanks in the Infantry, but that is relatively new, and DU is not. There used to be tanks now they are all Strykers, which I think are really cool vehicles BTW.
NRC controls DU use? Interesting, IDKT. You would think they would be more concerned with the Thorium sands used for blasting the sides of the submarines. Oh, I will get blasted for that won’t I?
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July 5th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Hawaiian –
If you re-read my post, you will note that I asked if the Davey Crockett system was deployed to Fort Lewis. That is the only system that used DU for practice rounds and that is because the real thing was a tactical nuclear weapon, which I believe was only fired once at the Nevada Test Site. The only DU ever expended in Hawaii was in these then classified, so not very many people would have known and frankly DU did not become a matter of concern until Saddam Hussein’s regime began indoctrinating scientifically ignorant peace activists in the 1990s. Some of those activists also were virulently anti-Israeli and one of the foremost anti-DU crusaders Douglas Lind Rokke spoke to a Neo Nazi convention in Washington DC. He also was introduced by the co-founder of the internet based American Gulf War Veterans Association which pushes the DVD “Beyond Treason” from its website. This stars Rokke, Leuren K Moret, who has independently made very anti-Israeli statements and Dennis Kyne who has falsely claimed that US used tactical nuclear weaon in Kuwait in 1991. You can see this at http://www.chairmanofnordwave.blogspot.com . Scroll down and find the Rokke introduction and scroll down all the way to get the flavor of this conference.
Far as the thorium sands, take it up with the folks at Naval Sea Systems Command. The most rigorous safeguards in the nuclear industry are in the naval nuclear program. I worked with it for half my civilian career in the Navy at and or supporting the now closed Mare Island Naval Shipyard.
Why don’t you come in from out of the cold and put your real name on the postings?
Roger
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July 5th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Hawaiian –
If you re-read my post, you will note that I asked if the Davey Crockett system was deployed to Fort Lewis. That is the only system that used DU for practice rounds and that is because the real thing was a tactical nuclear weapon, which I believe was only fired once at the Nevada Test Site. The only DU ever expended in Hawaii was in these then classified, so not very many people would have known and frankly DU did not become a matter of concern until Saddam Hussein’s regime began indoctrinating scientifically ignorant peace activists in the 1990s. Some of those activists also were virulently anti-Israeli and one of the foremost anti-DU crusaders Douglas Lind Rokke spoke to a Neo Nazi convention in Washington DC. He also was introduced by the co-founder of the internet based American Gulf War Veterans Association which pushes the DVD “Beyond Treason” from its website. This stars Rokke, Leuren K Moret, who has independently made very anti-Israeli statements and Dennis Kyne who has falsely claimed that US used tactical nuclear weaon in Kuwait in 1991. You can see this at http://www.chairmanofnordwave.blogspot.com . Scroll down and find the Rokke introduction and scroll down all the way to get the flavor of this conference.
Far as the thorium sands, take it up with the folks at Naval Sea Systems Command. The most rigorous safeguards in the nuclear industry are in the naval nuclear program. I worked with it for half my civilian career in the Navy at and or supporting the now closed Mare Island Naval Shipyard.
Why don’t you come in from out of the cold and put your real name on the postings?
Roger
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July 5th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Roger, chill.
I have no reason to believe that there is DU at either the Whidbey Island site, nor at Fort Lewis, but as I have not researched I am not willing to say that without admitting that I may be wrong. EVEN IF there IS DU at either site, it is not in any way a hazard.
I have been told in the past that some DU munitions were fired at Yakima, and there have been a lot of vehicles and aircraft use the site, but if I am wrong, I am wrong. Again, even if there were DU projectiles out there, the hazard from them is vanishingly small, especially when held up against the very real and kill-you-dead-right-now hazards that are available on the site.
As for tanks at Fort Lewis, I have no idea what units they were attached to, but I, personally, have seen tanks there on a number of occasions. And these were tanks, not Bradleys or Stykers, both of which I have seen and recognize. I do not know if the tanks belonged to one of the units stationed at the Fort, such as the heavy units in an infantry division, or tanks from elsewhere at the Fort for training or staging for overseas deployment. I’ve seen helicopters at the Fort, too, but that doesn’t mean I am claiming that there is an Airborne Division stationed there. Sheesh.
My position, in case anyone hasn’t figured it out, is that DU is not a hazard that requires special attention. I believe that there is no rational reason to connect DU with almost any health issues, let alone all the ones the anti side claims. I believe that the true agenda of many on the anti-DU side is anti-US Military, if not just antiAmerican, and they are more than willing to scare and manipulate people to further their agenda.
Honey; there is extensive control of any area being sand blasted, not specifically because there is thorium in the sand (and I don’t think thorium is a criteria for sellection, rather it is probably just something that is in grit with the desired characteristics), but because breathing the grit and the paint isn’t good for you. I’ve seen them tent the entire island of a aircraft carrier before removing the paint.
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July 6th, 2008 at 1:01 am
It may be of interest to note that aluminum oxide grit used to blast landing gear and other steel components, once used, is considered too radioactive for general land-fill disposal.
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July 6th, 2008 at 4:16 am
Ok so this continues…
And to just summarize the discussion:
A long used live fire range turns out to have various bits of toxic heavy metals as well as other debris.
Whoopty-freakin-doo That’s big news there. Some chunks of heavy metal.. on a live fire range.. geez… who would have thunk that.
And in other news. Whales sh*t in the ocean, so don’t go swimming!
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July 6th, 2008 at 4:24 am
Mike B said:
Well yeah, thorium is three times more common than uranium in geology so it turns up in a lot of minerals. Kitty litter has a tendency to be a bit radioactive due to thorium.. no they don’t put thorium in kitty litter becasue it has any useful property, it happens to be in the minerals it is manufactured from.
Thorium, however, is used in welding rods. In that case it’s because it has desirable characteristics at high temperatures. It’s used in some other applications, including some specialized optics and in certain alloys especially for improving the high temperature resistance and hardness by adding small amounts. Also, some antacids have a trace of thorium in them from the mineral calcium they have, which contains thorium impurities (tiny amounts, but detectable). Thorium has also been used in lantern mantles to give a good glow at high temperatures. Coleman doesn’t use it anymore, they use cerium. I guess it’s cheaper to manufacture that way or something. Century brand mantles supposedly still use thorium, which actually gives you slightly more light.
Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this.. I don’t want people to panic over everything with thorium in it the way they have with DU.
Oh yeah… it’s also a good idea to wear a mask and take some basic dust-related precautions whenever you sand ANYTHING. I’ve sanded rust off of metal and I wear a mask and (if I’m being responsible) goggles. The reason being that I just don’t want to choke on the dust nor do I want to get a big chunk of it in my eye. Yes, it’s only iron oxide – still, it’s a good habbit to get into with ANYTHING.
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July 6th, 2008 at 4:28 am
Roger Helbig said:
I highly doubt that the nuclear industry or the navy’s nuclear safety program or nuclear reactor operations would be in any way involved with the use of “thorium containing sand” any more than they would be involved with kitty litter. Or for that matter… are Brazil nuts allowed on base? How about bananas?
I mean as long as we’re talking “radioactive” as in registering significantly more radiation than background, I think we should consider bananas in the discussion.
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July 6th, 2008 at 6:03 am
The point that I wanted to make about the ranges in Washington is that unless you know that DU is present on a range, don’t speculate or use less speculative terms like undoubtedly.
Far as the thorium sands go, you probably are right, they have nothing to with naval reactors and if they exist may very well be because the thoriated welding rods.
Mare Island closed in 1996, so I did not ask any of my friends who used to work there. I last dealt with the nukes in 1994 and a little bit in the post closure environmental cleanup which sifted the dirt of the former on-base junk yard for radium buttons that had been used to light dials and the bridges of WW-II ships that had been disposed there. To do that, we used a piece of mining equipment with a wide conveyor that we spread the dirt out on and the men and women in the white suits held radiation measurement devices over the moving belt to isolate and remove the radium buttons.
Roger
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July 6th, 2008 at 6:51 am
WOW!!! I knew I would get blasted for the Thorium sands crack. It was just funny to me that we would have big piles of it on the bottom of the drydock and use it as the medium to sandblast the sides of the submarines. No, they would not cover the whole drydock, just make large containments to keep most of it in. Not too much of EPA in that. Thing is, we would put up magenta/yellow rope barriers with signs that read,
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July 6th, 2008 at 6:52 am
oh,oh what happened to the rest of my comment?
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July 7th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Reference Man at comment 57,
I haven’t finished this comment thread yet, but if you happen to come back here I have a question:
Were you my civilian health physics instructor at the Naval Reactors prototype near Idaho Falls circa 1983? You “sound” just like him. Hilarious and well-spoken he was. Full of wit and could teach a class, him. Always talked about the “diesel colloids” from the commuter busses being akin to smoking and much more harmful to health than the miniscule radiation doses we would receive from the Navy Nuclear Power program.
That was 25 years ago, and you seemed “old” at the time, but that was hard to judge when I was 19 or 20. Perhaps now you’re in your 70s? Most likely you’re not him, but I’ll bet from your writing you’ve been quite the instructor in these matters. Thanks to you and him.
In four half-lives of tritium, you’ve seen a lot.
And thanks to our host for this entertaining thread.
Not sure why Wordpress would reject me as spam, but I’ll try again. Sorry if this becomes a ‘double post.’
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July 8th, 2008 at 4:47 am
Well, to finish…
we would put up radiation barriers around the large piles of Thorium sand with signs saying
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July 8th, 2008 at 4:54 am
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July 8th, 2008 at 5:13 am
Hawaiian_Honey said:
Hawaiian_Honey said:
Hmm. Possibly some kind of attempt to claim censorship?
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July 8th, 2008 at 8:52 am
I don’t know what is going on. It happened three times when I put in numbers like less than one milirem.
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July 8th, 2008 at 8:54 am
well that went through, just not in number readings maybe? IDK.
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July 8th, 2008 at 9:20 am
You cannot use the ‘greater than’ or ‘less than’ symbol – the comment field reads them as HTML tags.
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July 25th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
I wonder if < and > work?
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July 25th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Ah, yes, for “less than” and “greater than”, use < and >
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April 22nd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
I’ve always wondered how people like fight4peace can be so ignorant. I wound up here following some tangential reading related to nuclear power and the rantings of some idiot about how its more destructive to the environment and people than say coal fired power (the industry I work in). The basic of that is the radiation of the leftovers of coal combustion far exceeds the radiation release to the environment from a comparable sized nuclear plant. The waste from 30 years of coal generation is in the millions of tons, the nuke plant will have perhaps 1,000 tons in the same time, give or take, its still a multiple of exponents in quantity – not to mention all the toxic compounds (mercury, SO2, anything else that was in the ground with the coal when it was mined).
The real simple thing about this whole arguement above is – *Depleted* Uranmium. Basic english language skills yield the understanding that the energized factor of the base uranium is essentially used up to only residual levels – just like a depleted battery, you might get a faint bit of juice but its essentially intert.
Uranium is a naturally occurring element, hysterics won’t change it, nor the history of its use in various consumer applications.
What really points up fight4peace as the idiot of the hour is the whole H-bomb thing. Before detonation and After – you don’t get that? (you really are retarted aren’t you). Lets try something you might be more familiar with – fertilizer (god knows you spout enough of it). Ammonium Nitrate is a fertilizer, it makes thing grow. If you add diesel fuel to it and a blasting cap – its a bomb! Imagine that. Does that make Miracle Grow evil? DU before an H Bomb detonates is a nearly inert heavy metal, when the H-Bomb detonates, it disintegrates the DU atoms into particles. If the case was made of iron, it would do the same thing. The only difference being that iron atoms likely are harder to split, and thus won’t sustain a fission chain reaction. So fusion bomb goes off, a few atoms get shattered and its over, but if the case is uranium, the few shatttered atoms shatter a few more and so forth. You really should actually understand the stuff you spout about at least at the kindergarten level.
And one other thing fight4peace, you realize how evil the type of person you are is? Had you been born in the region around Iraq and fed some of the extremist BS, you are the type of ignorant fanatical jackoff that would be strapping a bomb to their belt and blowing up their countrymen simply for smiling at some American GI who gave their kid a canteen of fresh water – the type of jackoff our soldiers are there trying to stop. So why don’t you just sit back, relax and have a nice glass of Jone’s Koolaid – do us all a favor.
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April 22nd, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Jim Mapes said:
Welcome dear sir, you sound like just the sort of person we like to see here, please feel free to stay and add your obvious commonsense, and acerbic wit to the comments in any thread any time.
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April 22nd, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Hi, Jim Mapes.
You have some stuff correct, and some that isat least stated poorly.
“Depleted” in “depleted uranium” really doesn’t mean the same as in “depleted battery”. DU is what is left over after the uranium has been processed to remove U235, which is much more fissile than U238. As it happens, the U235 (and U234, which gets removed with the U235, but no one really cares about) have shorter half-lifes, and thus are more radioactive per atom or gram than the U238 that is left in the DU.
The use of DU in some classes of nuclear weapons is not something I am prepared to discuss, for reasons of having known classified information about it, and having forgotten most of it. The DU issue generally is not about nuclear weapons, however, but about the DU ammo used for various planes and armored vehicles. In that application, the radioactive nature of DU is not the reason it is used; in fact, it is slightly annoying. There are other characteristics that make it a particularly good projectile for killing armor with.
You are correct that the amount of radioactive material a coal fired power plant releases to the environment is much greater than for a nuke, on pretty much any basis of comparison you can think of. You are also correct that the amount of waste produced is vastly greater on a tonnage basis, and even more so on a volume basis. Ironically, the toxic material in the coal waste is mostly stable elements, while the material of concern in spent fuel is radioactive, and thus the coal wastes will remain as dangerous over time as they start out (I believe the danger is often both over stated and ignored, depending on the agenda at hand), but the spent fuel will become less dangerous over time, and within a couple hundred years really isn’t “dangerous” at all.
Welcome to the discussion.
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April 10th, 2010 at 10:55 am
I wonder if any counterfeiters have used depleted uranium to make fake gold ingots or bullion coins?
The density is about the same as that of gold…
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April 10th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
George Carty said:
The stuff isn’t all that easy to work with, I know because I have had to deal with it as aircraft trim weights. It oxidises spontaneously in the presence of the least moisture and begins to flake. Because of its pyrophoric properties, it is a bastard to machine even as a Staballoy.
I suppose one could clad it very heavily in real gold, although one wouldn’t want the fake bars to drop, as uranium isn’t as malleable as gold at room temp, and they might well break.
At any rate they will still be radioactive, and the con would be easy to detect.
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August 29th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
I own a pair of dice, one of which is depleted uranium. The other is aluminum. They are about one inch cubed. They were meant to show the difference in density of various metals. The company my dad worked for in the 60’s and 70’s gave them out to customers. They were always good for an A in show and tell when I was a kid. Forty years later and I’ve had no ill effects. I mean, the third arm is really useful. Just having it around is not a problem. Inhaling it is a different matter entirely.
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