DU conspiracies

[ed84c]

not here, no, but as a general rule i hear people discussing roaches as if it was.

[Thomas Kirby]

So now not only do we have a lot of DU flying around, we have a gigantic pain in the ass for the technicians. Does anyone bother to measure the gamma ray flux around these things, by the way? Anyway, tracking that crap takes a lot of hours and money that is difficult to get back. I'd rather see that time and money go into aircraft safety. You can bet whatever you have in your bank account that the monitoring requirements are going to be placed ahead of other aircraft maintenance requirements because that's just how the government feels about such things as uranium. Clue: Just don't screw with the stuff in the first place. Evade the requirements by not messing with the material in the first place. Figure out how to use bismuth or tungsten. You'll make back the money anyway because you don't have people having to screw around with the uranium. You get rid of a hidden cost.

 

The necessity for government monitoring of this stuff just makes the situation even worse. I was already sick of government poking its nose into everything.

 

This also underlines the fact that the government does consider this stuff to be a hazardous material. If they knew for sure that it was safe, they would let me haul a few tons of it home to play with. I'm paranoid. I'd love to have it to use to shield me from microwave bombardment, X-rays, and millimeter radar, even if a hundred tons of it might be a pretty good emitter of gamma rays itself. I done been told it's safe, haven't I?

 

The idea of putting this stuff in an X-ray apron is just plain lame. Stainless steel shot would work just as well. If it just has to be dense, I could get us some bismuth, the same metal that goes into our favorite pink stomach medicine. Whatever way I go, the apron can only weigh so much. Mass is what shields us from X-rays, so mass it is.

 

The biggest benefit a bunch of DU has is that it is refined metal. You can work it like any other metal within limits. When you don't have to refine it down from ore, you save yourself a lot of time and money. If you have a company with a permit to use the stuff in ton quantities, one day you can report a lot of it "stolen."

 

So what happens when you dissolve a bunch of this in nitric acid and electroplate it onto aluminum foil or sheet? This of course presumes that the nitric acid is completely used up before you start electroplating to the foil. If that works you don't even have to work the uranium. Argonne National Laboratory has succeeded in using uranium as the cathode in a water solution. Others report success electroplating uranium onto other metals.

 

DU weights, according to the NRC, are not monitored, have been sent to scrap yards, and they rely on a legal prohibition but not monitoring to prevent people from tampering with them. A very relevant passage in this document is this: The current exemption does not expressly prohibit transfers to any persons, including scrap yards or recyclers. This means that the current NRC exemption from licensing of possession of DU does not, as it says, prohibit an airline from simply selling it to anyone they please. It certainly doesn't prevent someone from simply stealing some.

 

U-238 is also good for fusion-fission-fusion bombs because even if capture is low, there are enough neutrons to go around. This is a use that has actually been tested.

 

While I'm at it, even as much as I dislike the proliferation of nuclear materials, I wish we had put some real nuclear powered spacecraft up by 1970. Right now it seems so half-ass. If we're going to get irradiated anyway, why not do something real with it? Getting off the planet and mastering our own solar system is something we already need to do badly.

 

Also, the crack about radiation and cockroaches meant that things will get really bad before anyone does anything about it. Even when we realize that the toughest little mites are moving out of the way or dying, I think it's going to be hard to break the mental apathy.

 

The thing is, there's enough raw uranium lying around this earth to make many places naturally 'iffy' regardless of any DU used in the areas. A friend of mine who I play cards with on a weekly basis works at an airport. Any time any form of aircraft comes in to the airport and DU is used as a counterweight, they have to weigh the DU to make sure that all of it is there. There's a long audit trail on who touched it last. I think a lot of people have a tough time truly understanding how it is all tracked. Also, if people have the ability to turn DU into plutonium, then they also have the ability to turn uranium ore into plutonium. There is no tracking of uranium ore, as many people can just go into their backyard and dig into the ground to get some.

[Kniteli]

Wow Kirby, so you think that if something has even slight risks we should never use it. Thats intelligent. And you actually do worry about asteroids and this crap on a regular basis? Thats foolish, because while you are worrying about this distracting yourself you will get into a fatal car accident, mabye you should worry more about that...far more likely to happen. Why must people insist on dramatizing dooms day events and blowing them far out of proportion. And as for your comment about "why even have a ground war if we are so technologically superior." I didnt realize you were a military whiz as well. If you actually knew anything about warfare(and I dont pretend to know even a small amount about it.) you would know that you can never hold any kind of territory without infantry. The only way to win a war without a ground war, is to use nuclear weapons, thats it, just kill everything, and thats not really winning is it?

[knowaboutU]

Pu reactors in space are a real bad idea, seeing as just one could easily kill billions when (not if!) it reenters.

[Thomas Kirby]

Wow Kirby, so you think that if something has even slight risks we should never use it. Thats intelligent. And you actually do worry about asteroids and this crap on a regular basis? Thats foolish, because while you are worrying about this distracting yourself you will get into a fatal car accident, mabye you should worry more about that...far more likely to happen. Why must people insist on dramatizing dooms day events and blowing them far out of proportion. And as for your comment about "why even have a ground war if we are so technologically superior." I didnt realize you were a military whiz as well. If you actually knew anything about warfare(and I dont pretend to know even a small amount about it.) you would know that you can never hold any kind of territory without infantry. The only way to win a war without a ground war, is to use nuclear weapons, thats it, just kill everything, and thats not really winning is it?

 

I can't reply to this without getting screwed on warning points, so we can't go anywhere with this, sorry.

[knowaboutU]

Any time any form of aircraft comes in to the airport and DU is used as a counterweight, they have to weigh the DU to make sure that all of it is there. There's a long audit trail on who touched it last. I think a lot of people have a tough time truly understanding how it is all tracked .

 

Love to know more about this audit regime with du in aircraft.

In NZ the airnz engineers get no mention of it in training (unless they ask the oldtimers). Also our government, green party, university senior prof's had no idea it was used. In a country that has clear legislation banning the entry into our ports of Nuke powered or armed vessels, and specifically prohibiting the transport of nuclear waste of any form through a 600km offshore zone. I find this situation crazy. By the way US hates NZ so much for this Legislation that they have refused to play wargames with us since it was introduced in 87. (Boo Hoo )

Suspect you may be able to supply us with some per area rad readings from these Aviation sized blocks?

[Thomas Kirby]

Speaking of the transport of nuclear waste, I am very certain that a large amount of the "paranoia" against depleted uranium has to do with the track records of government and industry. There has been mishandling of nuclear waste and other radioactive materials that has resulted in sickness and death. There have definitely been policies of concealment of problems in the past. When could it have been decided that the governments and industry stopped deceiving us? Straight answers in the beginning would have made it much more possible to trust the answers we are given now. If they used to lie to us and they tell us the truth now, how do we know when they started telling the truth?

 

We have the history of sickness and death induced by mishandling radioactive materials. We have the history of government and industry concealing important facts. What would sane people believe?

[DV8 2XL]

KnowaboutU - Are you telling me that the techs don't have access to the standard Boeing and Airbus manuals? Because it's all in there along with the hazmat data that they are required by law in most jurisdictions to include.

 

Thomas, demystifying superstitions is virtually an impossible job, because people believe in superstition no matter what. It's like trying to prove that God does not exist. If you want to believe something, you will and I guess that is what's going on here.

 

The original report by Gunther that everybody still uses to "prove" the Iraqi increase in cancer and leukemia cases, showed the increases mostly in areas where very few DU weapons were used (Basra), and little or no increase in areas where DU weapons were used massively (border of Iraq and Kuwait). The increase in cancer and leukemia cases is real. But its distribution does not match the use of NATO weapons. The Clinton administration repeatedly responded to all these reports by showing that there was no correlation between the distribution of illnesses and the distribution of DU. But, of course, you will never find Clinton's arguments published on the websites that denounce the USA for using DU.

 

At the beginning of the Gulf War, DU-munitions were mainly used inside the territory of Kuwait, but there has been no increase in leukemia and cancer cases in Kuwait.

 

France has always been one of the main users of DU: Cogema, one of the world's main suppliers of DU, is a French company. One of the main DU processing facilities is in Annecy. The two largest storages of DU in Europe are in Bessines and Miramas. I bet there is more DU in France than all the DU left in Iraq. And France is much more densely populated than Iraq. So, according to the "depleted uranium kills civilians" theory, people should be dying like flies all over France.

 

No DU-related deaths have been verified in the countless camps in the USA where those DU bullets were used daily for training for many years. No such death was reported anywhere else in the world, despite the fact that NATO countries were transporting and stocking and testing and training with the same bullets and armors for 20 years. The Iraqi civilians have been exposed to only a fraction of the DU that NATO soldiers (and civilians in NATO countries) have been exposed to.

 

If DU caused cancer, you would notice a statistical anomaly in the number of cancer cases only after several years. Not even Hiroshima caused cancer right away. But the case for cancer caused by depleted uranium was made right after the war. A big tactical mistake, because it is hard to believe that cancer appeared so suddenly in so many people.

 

Whatever caused that increase was probably a much older event. A more reasonable explanation is that the increase in cancer and leukemia of the 1990s was caused by something that happened in the 1980s, before the coalition troops (including the USA) invaded Iraq.

 

In 2001 the UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) tested the effects of 9,000 kgs of DU munitions used in Kosovo. UNEP found no abnormal radioactivity, no significant sign of contamination in water or in the food chain, and no correlation with all reported illnesses.

 

Needless to say, countless journalists from the mainstream media have taken a Geiger counter and traveled to southern Iraq to test the Iraqi tanks hit by DU bullets. You never read their articles because... there was nothing to write about. They didn't find any abnormal radioactivity, they didn't write any article. Not a single one.

 

This is nothing but a huge fabrication that has been perpetrated to further anti-America propaganda at best , and to scam fools out of money by leveraging irrational fears at worst.

 

Find another windmill to tilt at.

[knowaboutU]

I think that AntiNar guy may have seen right thru you like a fast neutron burst 2xl.

[Thomas Kirby]

And cancers develop much faster from small concentrated sources of radioactivity. In a whiff of the smoke from burning DU you get a tremendous number of tiny hotspots.

 

Whether you think, in your best judgement, that the case against DU is "superstition", the same sources that claim that DU is safe first claimed that we were in no danger from the leakage from uranium processing plants, then revealed that we were pretty badly affected by that. Government and industry have a history of lying to us about many safety issues including radioactivity. Now you expect us to take the word of such sources and also to tolerate it when some of the same sources dismiss us as nutcases. We have liars calling people lunatics and hysterics. Even without the history, the habit of such namecalling labels the speaker as someone not to be trusted.

 

When someone did write articles about finding intense radioactivity, someone else waved their arms around and labelled them as lunatics. Where did that get us? If I waved my arms around and called you a lunatic, you would disbelieve me just because of that. You would consider such behavior to be a legitimate excuse. Why do I not have the same right?

 

The most painful and unfair part of this is that government and industry created the "mystification", but those who are affected by it are the ones who lose their jobs, their reputations, and often their lives because of it.

[DV8 2XL]

Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens

(Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain)...

 

Friedrich von Schiller

[Phi for All]

I think that AntiNar guy may have seen right thru you like a fast neutron burst 2xl.

Thanks for the heads up on your new account, antiNarcism! Opening up new accounts after you've been banned is, you guessed it, a bannable offense.

[Thomas Kirby]

Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens

(Against stupidity' date=' the gods themselves struggle in vain)...[/i']

 

Friedrich von Schiller

 

Noted.

 

The best point that I've come across in the last couple of days is that DU can burn in a fire. Steel burns too, and the fire is exothermic, and usually there is not enough oxygen available to make it a self-sustaining flame. This does mean that a hot enough fire can erode sheet metal away. And of course in the real world, if a potentially dangerous item is safe as long as it is not mishandled, abused, burned, or does not meet some other common mishap, it's not all that safe.

 

The radiological hazard for inhaled uranium is greatly underestimated if we make some of the following mistakes: If we calculate for the radioactivity of pure U-238, which is one third of the activity (raw count of emissions, not energy) of U-238 that has aged six months. If we read the activity level for beta and alpha from the surface of a piece that has any thickness at all. If we don't account for the much smaller amount of body tissue that absorbs all of the alpha and beta and some of the gamma radiation. We also need to account for the fact that each particle is surrounded by body tissue. The body tissue captures 100 percent of the radiation of a particle embedded in it when it would only capture 50 percent or less of the radiation of a particle that is even a hundred microns away from the skin. Whatever dose we are talking about, the alpha portion is delivered to less than a millionth of the body mass. My mass of body tissue is roughly 100,000 ccs. If I went about eight cubic millimeters for the amount of tissue exposed to the alpha from the decay of U-238, that's about 1/1.25 * 10^7 of my body tissue. One over 12.5 million of my body tissue is exposed to about 12.5 million times the dose per unit of body mass that I would receive if the same amount of radiation were spread out all over my body. This is just counting the alpha, now. Alpha has that special property of not being able to travel a full millimeter in flesh. This also means that it deposits all of its ionizing energy within that millimeter. And I know that a sphere of one millimeter radius has a volume of less than 8 millimeters.

 

238 micrograms of U-238, a millionth of a mole, generates about 5.8 counts per second of alpha. That's a piece of dust well under a milligram in weight, and a bit smaller than a roach dropping.

 

Maybe we could argue the merits of the view that inhaling particulates increases the damage to the exposed mass of body tissue by at least 10 million, and the damage is done to living tissue, not dead cells on the skin or hair. We could also argue the merits of the view that inhaling U-238 smoke introduces thousands, maybe millions of these particles, weights within a given range, and that each site that they park in becomes another area that receives massive radiation damage. Another idea to consider is that even on the surface of exposed skin, dust can work its way into living tissue.

[DV8 2XL]

Thomas, you and I will never see eye-to-eye on this question and at this point we are at risk of just repeating ourselves ad infinitum. Also the amusement factor of this topic has left along with the comic relief from New Zealand.

 

Would you please join me in a thread I started called "Nonproliferation policies must be called a failure." over in the politics section of the forum; I think you might have some valuable insights and we would be allies (I think)?

[Kniteli]

There really is just no way to make ground with someone who has something set in their head, and thats that. From the comments you've made on this thread so far, I would expect you are a VERY paranoid person. Just because a government or industry has lied in the past does NOT mean that theyre lying about this, and I acknowledge the POSSIBILITY that they are lying, but that in itself does not even come close to proving your point, since in the real world, the law of the excluded middle does NOT apply.

[Thomas Kirby]

Knitelli:

 

You are telling me that I am paranoid because I believe that people who have lied before are going to lie again. A certain person or agency has lied to me before and has shown a pattern of lying about a particular subject. According to you it's bad logic to think that the next time the same person or agency tells me pretty much the same story, and this case is pretty much the same kind of story, that they might follow the same pattern that they have in the past. According to you, even though they lied before, I am paranoid, mentally ill, and illogical if I don't simply take their word for it this time.

 

Oh yes, surely your logic and your diagnosis of my mental state are flawless given the above. It's not because they have lied before. It's not because the published information saying the DU is safe contains obvious fallacies. It's not because they tell us that the people who have measured the radiation are crazy, or that people who even want to measure the radiation are crazy. It is because I personally have a character defect that I even consider the possibility that they might be lying.

[Kniteli]

Its not that you are questioning whether theyre lying or not, its that youre coming up with conclusions based on the POSSIBLE fact that they may be lying.

Its like if a man were taking a lie detector test, and he was found to be lying about something, but from the very fact that he is lying they cannot prove that he murdered someone, and this is assuming they KNOW hes lying. Besides this, youre changing your position around on DU like crazy, first its that someone might make a bomb out of it, now its that its a hazardous weapon? You mean like a minefield thats 40 years old? What IS your position now?

[mmalluck]

Wasn't this thread about YT's possible Plutonium he had?

 

If you guys want to continue your pissing contest over DU and other radiologic hazards I suggest you start a new thread. Failing that, this thread will be locked like the other.

[Dave]

I was going to post exactly what mmalluck has said, but unfortunately he got there first. Stop the arguments, guys. It's getting real old, real fast.

[Thomas Kirby]

Its not that you are questioning whether theyre lying or not' date=' its that youre coming up with conclusions based on the POSSIBLE fact that they may be lying.

Its like if a man were taking a lie detector test, and he was found to be lying about something, but from the very fact that he is lying they cannot prove that he murdered someone, and this is assuming they KNOW hes lying. Besides this, youre changing your position around on DU like crazy, first its that someone might make a bomb out of it, now its that its a hazardous weapon? You mean like a minefield thats 40 years old? What IS your position now?[/quote']

 

Perhaps you should try to actually address the issues I raise? Refusing to simply take the word of the government, for the very good reason that the government has lied numerous times, is simply common sense. How then do we check it out and find out if they are telling us the truth this time?

[swansont]

Perhaps you should try to actually address the issues I raise? Refusing to simply take the word of the government, for the very good reason that the government has lied numerous times, is simply common sense. How then do we check it out and find out if they are telling us the truth this time?

 

How about starting a thread about government conspiracies somewhere other than in the physics section?

[Thomas Kirby]

How about remembering that a little common courtesy goes a long way?

 

Flesh in which particles of DU are embedded receive their dose of alpha rays in a volume at least 12 million times smaller than the human body. Perhaps in the interest of being on topic you can reassure me that a couple of hundred micrograms embedded in lung tissue is still quite harmless. Perhaps you can show me the studies that show that the damage caused by thousands or millions of inhaled particles of DU is still not a health threat.

[DV8 2XL]

The World Health Organization agrees that DU is not a great health risk. Its 2003 fact sheet on the topic declares that "because DU is only weakly radioactive, very large amounts of dust (on the order of grams) would have to be inhaled for the additional risk of lung cancer to be detectable in an exposed group. Risks for other radiation-induced cancers, including leukaemia, are considered to be very much lower than for lung cancer." Another WHO report found, "The radiological hazard is likely to be very small. No increase of leukemia or other cancers has been established following exposure to uranium or DU."

 

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/

 

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/pub_meet/Depluranium4.pdf

[swansont]

How about remembering that a little common courtesy goes a long way?

Was that addressed to me? You didn't quote anything.

 

 

Asking you to stay marginally on-topic is somehow impolite? It had already been suggested that DU is off-topic for this thread, and a new one should be started. I don't see how government conspiracies have anything to do with physics, and is way off-base.

[YT2095]

There, All nice and Tidy again

 

the thread`s now been Split, and there`s no worry of Off-Topicness anymore, Enjoy!

 

 

</Sarcasm>