[Peace-discuss] DU

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/107382_uranium06.shtml

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
February 6, 2003


Lowry unrealistic about depleted uranium

By ROGER LONGLEY*
GUEST COLUMNIST


The Jan. 28 column by Rich Lowry on the hazards of
depleted uranium tops my list for disinformation
("Depleted uranium effective but not politically
incorrect"). He is in the ballpark when he says 300
tons of depleted uranium was used in the first Gulf
War, but he is confusing the issue, and perhaps
himself, when he says DU is depleted.

Most of the radiation in natural uranium comes from
Uranium 238 (U-238). What largely remains in DU is
U-238, its decay products and other contaminants from
irradiation of uranium. Gamma radiation from this mix
can be dangerous when a large quantity of DU is finely
divided, even without ingesting or inhaling it.

It is highly misleading to say that living next to a
ton of U-238 is harmless because the issue is not the
hazard of DU as a metal but its effect as a gaseous,
dispersed oxidized material after it has been used as
an armor piercing weapon. DU burns as it passes
through armor.

Lowry further confuses the issue when he says no
adverse health effects have been found for DU. There
have been no studies where DU has been used as a
weapon so this statement is meaningless.

A decaying U-238 atom presents the same danger as a
decaying Plutonium 239 (Pu-239) atom but U-238 is
considered harmless because it decays about 200,000
times slower than Pu-239. Where Pu-239 is dangerous if
you ingest a fraction of a millionth of a gram, you
have to consume about 0.025 grams of U-238 to produce
the same hazard.

Possibly 100 tons of the 300 tons of DU used in Iraq
were converted on impact into gaseous uranium oxide or
a finely divided uranium powder. Both the oxide and
the powder will settle out on the ground locally or
drift in the wind. In terms of grams, this is
100,000,000 grams, enough to be harmful to hundreds of
millions of people if it is ingested.

Inhalation of U-238 into your lungs is much more
serious than ingestion. Inhalation is considered
dangerous if the air concentration of U-238 is greater
than a millionth of a gram per cubic meter. If 100
million grams of U-238 oxide and finely divided U-238
particles were spread out on the ground and stirred
into the air up to a height of 1 meter, it would cover
more than 10 million square miles at this
concentration.

In fact DU is not spread that far in Iraq and exists
locally in much higher, more dangerous concentrations.
Even today one can measure gamma radiation levels up
to 3.5 millirad/hour around the tanks on the "Highway
of Death," a separate hazard from inhaling or
ingesting DU. 

Defenders of DU like to say uranium is everywhere,
that we all have a little uranium in us. This is true.
There is a lot of uranium in the ocean, but you would
have to drink about 25 tons of seawater before you
would need to worry. If you dug up all the dirt in
your back yard, it's doubtful you would be able to
detect any uranium.

The issue with DU as a weapon is all about
concentration. We should understand from such places
as Hanford, it is the localized concentration of
radioactive materials that presents problems. Even
though DU is weakly radioactive, its use as a weapon
in multi-ton quantities raises the level of
radioactivity in the area of use to dangerous levels.

This use of DU in armor-piercing ammunition
effectively puts us in the same class as someone who
would use a "dirty" bomb to contaminate an area with
radioactivity. The difference is that we do it, and
have done it, on a much grander scale than a terrorist
could possibly realize.

*Roger Longley of Friday Harbor was a senior nuclear
engineer for nine years at General Dynamics/Fort
Worth.