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I sincerely doubt, if this study is an accurate indication of the harm from Depleted Uranium, it is even close to the defects caused by lack of medical care and supply line issues caused by war.
Babies with mutations for any reason in any hospital look as horrific as those photos. And most are preventable today in many parts of the world for far more mundane problems, like not having access to a doctor or proper nutrition.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
when you say "lead bullets" do you mean gun bullets, or armor piercing bullets / projectiles? a normal bullet does not vaporize and contaminate the whole area in the same way vaporizing projectiles do...
Depleted Uranium is not designed to vaporize. It has a boiling point (3818°C) more than twice that of lead (1740°C). It's atomic mass of 238 is considerably higher than Lead's 207.5. It packs quite the punch when put into a slug, but does not reach temperatures where it could vaporize. Certainly particulate matter would be ejected from the impact, though as with most slugs. That said, what was done here is despicable…
when an uranium projectile hits the armor, some of the uranium burns into uranium oxide, a dust of which gets dispersed all around. Big problem in Serbia too - in 1999 NATO used 30K+ units of uranium ammunition there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depleted Uranium is not designed to vaporize. It has a boiling point (3818°C) more than twice that of lead (1740°C). It's atomic mass of 238 is considerably higher than Lead's 207.5. It packs quite the punch when put into a slug, but does not reach temperatures where it could vaporize. Certainly particulate matter would be ejected from the impact, though as with most slugs. That said, what was done here is despicable…
> It's atomic mass of 238 is considerably higher than Lead's 207.5. Atomic mass has little to do with an element's boiling point.
With a “half-life of 4.5 billion years” does that mean these areas are going to be permanent toxic waste lands? Regardless why isn’t there a growing movement to call the perpetrators of this war criminals?
If the half-life is that long, exposure to direct environmental radiation is probably not that big of a concern- the sieverts will be very low- and the main harm comes through ingesting, inhaling, etc. I would wonder if things like dust abatement, water filtration, and food washing would be used to manage the issue in the future. As a point of comparison, regular U-238 is present at low levels all over the place in C…
With a “half-life of 4.5 billion years” does that mean these areas are going to be permanent toxic waste lands? Regardless why isn’t there a growing movement to call the perpetrators of this war criminals?
> Regardless why isn’t there a growing movement to call the perpetrators of this war criminals? You're kidding right? Before the US invasion, the largest protests in the world happened all over the world against it and it didn't do anything. > Social movement researchers have described the 15 February protest as "the largest protest event in human history" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot.…
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/2008/03/19/public-attitudes-towa...
And this is why China is hated passionately in the West. Because it is the only credible potential deterrence in the future against the West doing whatever they want on whomever the want (outside their territories that is). It is of course possible that China itself will turn into another hegemonic military power with scant regard for non-Chinese lives the way the US has been for decades, but nevertheless in a multi-…
No it isn't, it's the government that we find deeply grubby. And this subject is unrelated to china.
I do not want to minimize the consequences of war, but this article has no plausibility.
With a “half-life of 4.5 billion years” does that mean these areas are going to be permanent toxic waste lands? Regardless why isn’t there a growing movement to call the perpetrators of this war criminals?
All these images are terrible, but it doesn't match my understanding of radioactivity. I thought the lessons learned from Hiroshima and Nagazaki was that radioactivity was causing very few mutations (far less than expected), but instead was causing mainly sterilities. I am not an expert, but teratogene effects are generally caused by chemical products. If uranium is similar to lead, it should cause neurologic disease…
DU is toxic, but the main hazard is inhaling the dust. That's likely not a big issue unless you're near impacting rounds...