Depleted Uranium

[Csargo]

I found this while surfing the internet.

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2003/546/546p17.htm

What do you think about this? I'll wait to post my thoughts

[Xiahou]

I know depleted uraniun cant be good for you- but I also doubt it's near as bad as they'd have you think.

[Kralizec]

I found out about this stuff a couple of years ago when I read an article about health problems related to DU munition in Yugoslavia, and was shocked to find out how few people actually know about this. It should be widely known. DU munitions should be banned.

[Csargo]

I was hoping more people would bite on this topic but oh well. My stand on it is that DU munitions should be banned from use like Kralizec said. There harmful pretty dangerous from what I've read about them. If anyone has more sites you should post them.

[discovery1]

mehness. You don't want to breathe in the stuff, and handling it for long periods is a bad idea since it does all the bad stuff that lead does only more so. About banning? I don't really care, although I remeber reading about some tungston alloy that is just as hard.

[DemonArchangel]

Ok, DU is superior to tungsten, because although tungsten is hard, it tends to flatten itself out into a pancake,DU on the other hand sharpens itself as it burrows in, and when it finishes drilling through the target, the inside of the target will be sprayed with flaming DU dust, ventilating it completely.

[Ice]

Each weapon system that uses DU has undergone extensive developmental testing and evaluation. As part of that process, DOD evaluates possible alternative metal alloys considering operational requirements and medical/environmental impacts. As improvements have been made in the "hardness" of armored vehicles, tests have demonstrated that DU offers superior performance to all other alloys.

Until we find something better, no.

http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/faq_17apr.htm

[professorspatula]

You know with any article that comes from a publication with the words 'Green' and 'left' in the title and features an image of Che Guevara as the romanticised hero, that you have to take it's 'facts' with a pinch of salt. I'm not saying they're not right on this issue, but when something is presented so one-sided, it irks me to say the least. Almost makes me want to find some right-wing army nut to get their opinion on the matter, just to get a sense of balance.

[Xiahou]

If anyone has more sites you should post them.

Here's one for balance. And Here is one that originally appeared in the Washington Post. Here's a sample:

There is theoretically a cancer risk if a person ingests uranium dust, but the amount required would be huge, said Raymond A. Guilmette, a radiobiologist at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque.

He calculated that a person would have to eat 100 micrograms of depleted uranium -- mixed with dirt, this would amount to about a half teaspoon -- every day for 50 years to get just one one-thousandth of the radiation dose experienced, on average, by nuclear industry workers. A recent study of 100,000 such workers from three countries found a slight increase in leukemia and no increase in other forms of cancer.

Inhalation is the other potentially hazardous route of exposure to depleted uranium dust.

Studies of uranium miners from the 1940s and 1950s, who were exposed to both radon gas and uranium dust, found an increase in lung cancer (especially in smokers) decades after exposure, but no increases in leukemia, lymphoma or other cancers. Recently, a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found no relationship between acute lymphoblastic leukemia -- the most common childhood cancer -- and household levels of radon.

[discovery1]

DA, you sir are WRONG!!! sort of anyway

Amorphous tungsten alloy has many of the properties that make DU such an effective penetrator: it is self-sharpening and it should also be pyrophoric, says Steve Collier, president of Liquidmetal's defence arm.

The new contract is for a test batch of 30-millimetre ammunition of the type used by American A-10 "tank buster" aircraft, which fired some 75 tonnes of DU during the recent Iraq conflict.

[Csargo]

Glad there are more people talking about this now makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside :)

[Samurai Waki]

Exactley the reason why the A-10 Warthog uses DU Shells for it's GAU-8 Autocannon. God I love seeing those things in Practice at Edwards AFB.

[DemonArchangel]

DA, you sir are WRONG!!! sort of anyway

Amorphous tungsten indeed has many of the properties of depleted Uranium, as does Nanocrystalline tungsten materials (which, by the way, is superior in density and structural integrity to amorphous tungsten). One property it doesn't have is low cost. Pouring and milling and forging the penetrators would cost a fortune (it's not just a simple spike, it has be to milled into a single big crystal in order to go through the adiabatic shear banding, otherwise it would simply snap in two after twisting around a couple of times in the armor.)

http://ciar.org/ttk/mbt/papers/symp_19/VM05(913.pdf

Nanocrystalline tungsten for you. God I love that stuff, especially with the correct type of jacketing.