Where is the machine? Why cant we see it? How can I admire the work you do when I can not see the Link? P.S. Are you not afraid of radiation with the type of work you do?
Using the vast resources of my employing Agency,and under the authority of my unmentionably secret security clearance, I have secured at great peril to the entirety of Humanity, an image of PDF’s machine.
I have to wear a dosimeter whenever I’m on site. My total dose over 4 years is 0.00 mSv. The machine itself is encased in ~2m of radiation-hardened concrete, and just getting permission to work on it when it isn’t operating (and hence not generation radiation) is a bit of a pain. I was actually doing the course to act as Engineer in Charge of the machine a year or two back, but wasn’t selected.
As for where it is, if you scroll down and follow the link at the bottom left called “Visiting JET”, you get full details on how to visit for free, a map and even a roadsign pointing to it.
Best external photo I can find - still looks at least 10 years old, we’ve added bits since.
Scroll down you dingbat, and you’ll find some text and links.
PDF, Why the hell did the USA not make it mandatory for American combat troops to wear a Dosimeter (like the one you wear to work), when they were in Afghanistan. I understand the cost would have been relatively cheap, around $20 per soldier. The Americans used depleted Uranium in their bullets so it would pierce through better than standard bullets and subsequently when the bullets hit the object it slammed into, the heat developed or friction would have resulted in vapor mist of Uranium and subsequently when thousands of these types of bullets are shot off, it would make the area more unsafe due to radiation potential. Having the American troops exposed to this type of environment for so many years will have an impact on their health. It is like breathing in asbestos and we all know the long term effects of that!. I am very upset over this. But what I am more upset over than that, is the fact that Canada has been allowing the Afghanistan toothless refugees with 18 children come into Canada as reffugees, sucking the life out of our economy and subsequently having to need free health care to combat their radiation issues. Oh brother, oh my oh me.
Oh and RS,this is for you…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-01/afghan-refugees-who-helped-defence-resettled-in-australia/5492380
More than 500 Afghans resettled in Australia after helping Defence Force…and apparently they all have jobs and contributing so beautifully to the Australian economy. Despite a 5.8% unemployment rate in Australia http://www.tradingeconomics.com/australia/unemployment-rate…there is still room for hard working refugees…
I’ll leave it to Canadians to comment on such matters affecting Canada internally despite its well deserved international reputation as being a generous country in accepting refugees, but so far as Australia is concerned I’m glad that we’ve repaid the loyalty of some Afghans who took great risks in assisting our forces in their country.
It’s a lot better than we did for some Iraqis in another not so distant war, and in Vietnam previously, and in Papua New Guinea in a different way from WWII.
I don’t find it unreasonable that people in Afghanistan or Iraq whose countries were destroyed by our and other Coalition forces, who had nothing to do with the corrupt leaderships in their countries which brought our destructive military involvement, right or wrong, into their lives should expect us to pick up part of the tab for destroying their lives and countries. Compared with what the Allies poured into Germany and Japan after WWII, the little we’re doing now doesn’t qualify as even mean spirited.
As for hard working genuine, as distinct from economic, refugees from any place of conflict or political or racial or caste oppression which places their lives in danger or causes them to have a well founded fear of persecution, which is distinct from repaying our debt to those who assisted our forces in Afghanistan or elsewhere by taking them and their families to our country to preserve their lives, I’m all in favour of giving as many of them as we can accommodate a home here. They’re the sort of people who’ve made a major contribution to building this nation over a couple of centuries, unlike some of our local dole bludgers (look it up on google) etc who are parasites on the rest of us, including hard working refugees who contribute a lot more to everything of value in this nation than local dole bludgers etc.
As for your figures on unemployment, they’re the same sort of bullshit our national governments have been using for decades to conceal the true level of unemployment, which is higher than the ‘official’ figure… Here’s our official government definition of employment:
Employed persons comprise all those civilians aged 15 years and over who worked for one hour or more in the reference week or who had a job from which they were absent. Work is taken to mean work for one hour or more during the reference week, undertaken for pay, profit, commission or payment in kind, in a job, business or farm, or without pay in a family business or farm.
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/featurearticlesbyCatalogue/C35049FCB841741BCA256A1F0002C384?OpenDocument
If you’re employed for at least one hour a week (see link), you’re not counted in our unemployment statistics.
Working for one hour a week is not employment. It’s not even a hobby. And calling someone who works for only an hour or few a week as employed is insulting to them if they want full time work, and demonstrative of the bullshit our national governments of both major parties use to try to persuade us that a steaming turd is a piece of tasty chocolate, and that the government should be congratulated for delivering the supposed chocolate.
Do you see a degree of inconsistency, and inhumanity, between wanting radiation protection for American troops allegedly exposed to depleted uranium in a country they invaded and your complaint about supposed burdens on the Canadian health care system in caring for refugee Afghan civilians who had nothing to do with the reasons for the invasion and no ability to protect themselves from the radiation health problems you say those civilians supposedly suffer?
Err… no. Quite apart from the fact that soldiers are overloaded as it is (infantry in Afghanistan carry some of the heaviest loads infantry have ever had to in wartime and still be expected to fight - 90 to 100 lb loads are common, while WW1 infantry were criticised as overloaded for carrying 60lbs), a dosimeter doesn’t confer any protection - if developed regularly it lets you know that you have been exposed and alerts the Health Physics guys to investigate the source of exposure so that nobody else gets dosed by it. In a military context, it would take ridiculously hot doses (many billions of times higher than you would get from depleted uranium) to impede operations and hence benefit from dosimetry.
Which brings me to my other objection. Depleted uranium really, really isn’t very radioactive - it’s only about 100 times more radioactive per unit weight than Brazil nuts. Brazil nuts are frequently marketed as a health food and sold in supermarkets, while depleted uranium is really only an exposure hazard when you’re exploring a target hit with DU rounds (mostly armoured vehicles) and so get a lungful.
Actually, it isn’t. The primary threat is heavy metal toxicity rather than lung cancers - so much like living in a city before the introduction of unleaded petrol.
Aside from all this – I doubt very many DU rounds were fired in Afghanistan, say perhaps after the initial pummeling of the Taliban since there was very little armor faced by Coalition/NATO forces since the outset of the war in 2001.
I don`t know NickÉ…This doctor guy below claims that Americans are still using DU over there…An Afghan activist reveals the US is still using horrific depleted uranium weapons in Afghanistan, creating graveyards of people who die of cancer and other unusual diseases, Press TV reports.“These weapons are still used. In fact, a US aircraft called A-10 warthog, normally, even if it doesn’t use a uranium projectile in the machine gun, every third projectile is a uranium projectile and that’s the working horse of the US army in Afghanistan. They use it left and right,” Dr. Mohammad Daud Miraki said in an interview with Press TV.
http://www.presstv.com/detail/224165.html
I realize the true tragedy is with the residents and not only the soldiers (RS was correct in a prior statement)…but I am not feeling altruistic today. All I can say is I would rather pay more taxes to shoulder the burden of the health effects this has taken on our soldiers and the soldiers who did not know about the health effects . Its not their fault they were over there. They were simply following orders and for that we owe them what ever it takes because I did not go over there. They did. They protected me and for that I owe them and tip my hat off for them.Its like another Agent Orange, all over again!!God Bless Our Vets!And God Bless America! We owe our Vets Big Time!
I was cautious not to accept that depleted uranium caused any cancers because I was uncertain whether it was capable of doing so, which may be unlikely in view of pdf27’s comments, and because I doubted that there was much use for it Afghanistan, for the reasons Nick outlined. The following article supports pdf27’s and Nick’s views, and contradicts Dr Miraki’s specific claims about Warthog munitions in Afghanistan.
Scientific American
This article is from the In-Depth Report The Specter of Chemical and Biological Weapons
Is Karzai’s Accusation That Coalition Forces Are Polluting Afghanistan with Nuclear Material Accurate or an Over-Reaction?
Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s recent comment that U.S. and NATO-led forces use weapons with “nuclear components” may be a reference to depleted-uranium munitions, whose health impact is still being studied
Jun 25, 2011 |By Larry Greenemeier
President Obama has called for the withdrawal of 33,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan over the next year and the remaining 68,000 by the end of 2014, but questions linger regarding what the troops are leaving behind after more than nine years of combat. In particular, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has accused U.S. and NATO-led coalition troops of littering his country with weapons that use “nuclear components.”
Karzai made this comment last week during an address to the Afghanistan Youth International Conference, throughout which he broadly criticized coalition forces and pointed out that the U.S. has been in negotiations with the Taliban in an attempt to end the fighting set off by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, during an appearance June 19 on CNN’s State of the Union news program, confirmed such negotiations had taken place. Less clear, however, are exactly which weapons Karzai was referencing and their long-term impact on the Afghani people and their country.
Karzai’s comments likely refer to ammunition that uses depleted uranium (DU) to pierce armor or, conversely, to strengthen armored vehicles, according to scientists as well as intelligence and policy analysts. They also note that DU is not “nuclear” in the sense that brief exposure to it would not cause radiation sickness or cancer in the way that fallout from a nuclear warhead or meltdown would. DU, the main by-product of uranium enrichment, is a chemically and radiologically toxic heavy metal that is “mildly radioactive,” with about 60 percent of the activity of natural uranium, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
“In short, DU munitions are not even remotely on the same scale of danger as having a war in the first place,” says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and publisher of the ArmsControlWonk blog, which addresses disarmament, arms control and nonproliferation.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), a Unified Combatant Command unit of the U.S. armed forces whose territory includes the Middle East, claims that no DU weapons are currently being used in Afghanistan, although a spokesman acknowledges that “DU-type munitions were used in Iraq in anti-tank and anti-armor weapons.” The U.S. military itself has reported on its use of Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II jet fighter aircraft in Afghanistan. Whereas the A-10’s standard 30-millimeter rounds normally contain DU, CENTCOM says that the A-10s in use in Afghanistan are not using DU munitions.
Why use DU?
“Wherever we send our A-10s, soon enough we hear reports of uranium contamination thanks to depleted uranium,” says Chris Bronk, an information technology policy research fellow at Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and a former U.S. State Department diplomat. Still, it is unclear how much DU ammunition has actually been used in Karzai’s country (either by the U.S. or its NATO allies) and the long-term impact of DU on the environment, he adds.
DU kinetic-energy rounds are an effective way of penetrating armored vehicles. “You want something dense, and DU is denser than lead, something on the order of 1.6 times the density of lead,” says Kristian Gustafson, deputy director of the Brunel Center for Intelligence and Security Studies (BCISS) at West London’s Brunel University. “You’ve now upped your energy transfer by significant quantity.” Still, U.S. and NATO air-strike targets in Afghanistan are more likely to be mud–brick buildings than armored vehicles, and DU rounds “are useless for anything other than smashing armor,” he adds.
DU is used in anti-tank shells because it is a heavy metal that can slam through shielding plates on armored vehicles, agrees Hans Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project.
How dangerous is DU?
The DU used in munitions is neither the same as natural uranium ore nor the radioactive uranium used in a nuclear reactor. DU is mostly composed of the isotope uranium 238 (U238); its more radioactive content, U235, is at least three times less than that of natural uranium, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). “Natural uranium ore contains almost entirely U238 but also a small amount of U235,” Kristensen adds.
The reason for this breakdown, as well as the different isotopic proportions found in uranium used as fuel, has to do with nuclear physics: U235 can fission, U238 cannot easily fission. “During enrichment of uranium, to turn it into reactor fuel or highly enriched nuclear weapons material the enrichment process increases the amount of U235 to 3 percent in reactor fuel and more than 90 percent in weapons,” Kristensen says. “The leftover U238 is referred to as depleted uranium.”
Because DU contains much less U235 than natural uranium, it is less of a health threat, in terms of radioactivity, than both natural and fuel-grade uranium.
U238 is not radioactive in and of itself, but naturally decays and transforms to other elements, including lead, over time. “Some of those elements are radioactive, and one of them, radon (a gas), can be problematic because it can be inhaled and emits alpha particles, which, if embedded in the lungs, can cause cancer,” Kristensen says. Still, U238 decays slowly—half of the material decays in 4.5 billion years—so the trace elements are miniscule."
WHO notes that the kidneys are most likely to be damaged from depleted uranium’s chemical toxicity. Such damage would more likely result from ingestion of food and water containing uranium isotopes and inhalation of uranium-contaminated dust. External gamma exposure is generally not a major concern because uranium emits only a small amount of low-energy gamma radiation, and beta exposure is only of concern for direct handling operations, according to a study (pdf) produced in 2001 by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory.
Health questions persist
The health effects resulting from DU exposure depend on the route and magnitude of exposure as well as the metal’s characteristics, such as particle size, chemical form and solubility, according to UNEP, which has studied the use of this material in armed conflicts in Kosovo (pdf), Serbia and Montenegro (pdf), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (pdf). The three studies concluded that, whereas radiation can be detected at DU sites, the levels are so low that they do not pose a threat to human health and the environment.
At the same time, however, the studies identified a number of remaining scientific uncertainties that should be further explored. These include the extent to which DU on the ground can filter through the soil and eventually contaminate groundwater, and the possibility that DU dust could later be resuspended in the air by wind or human activity, with the risk that it could be inhaled. These assessments of the Balkan wars were made two-to-seven years after NATO air strikes using DU weapons.
“Although our assessments to date, under conditions prevailing in the Balkans, have concluded that DU contamination does not pose any immediate risks to human health or the environment, the fact remains that depleted uranium is still an issue of great concern for the general public,” former UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said in a statement in 2003.
Given the U.S. military’s claims that it is no longer using DU weapons in Afghanistan and a lack of clear evidence that DU poses immediate and severe health risks, Karzai’s comments are more likely politically motivated than grounded in science. “Domestically he has to shore-up his constituents by making a show of not toadying to the Americans,” Gustafson says. “At the international level, he has to extract the best deal possible from NATO and the Americans. This means putting on the pressure in ways that he can to get his way with them, whilst ensuring they keep supporting him.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/afghanistan-karzai-us-depleted-uranium/
Er, Press TV is the English-Language service of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting corporation, an organisation owned by the Iranian state and with close links to the Revolutionary Guards. If they said that Barack Obama was the US President I’d double check them - they have a long, long history of saying nasty things about the US.
Incidentally, there is no way they’d use every third round as DU. The ballistics of DU and conventional rounds would be very different, so the A-10 would be hitting two different aiming points at once. Given how scarily close they are called in (I’ve talked to people who’ve had A-10 fire called in the other side of a mud-brick wall from them, no more than 10m away) there is no way on earth two aiming points would be accepted. Either all the rounds are DU, or none are.
Are you saying that depleted uranium does not cause cancer? There are so many articles on increased birth deformities in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also many articles on American service men coming back and having cancer later. I saw a big Expose on History Channel about it. I don’t know why you don’t accept the possibility. If it is possible, then we must research it more out of respect to our vets. The History Chanel said its a big cover up and they exposed the truth. There are also too many articles on the net that indicate it, despite your link saying there is not. There are just as many scientists that say there is Global Warming than there are scientists that say there is not. SO, in the end, possibilities should not be ignored.
Although depleted uranium may not pose an immediate threat, because it is both radioactive and toxic, some action is warranted. Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UNEP, sums up the recommendations made by the Balkans Task Force in 1999: "Highest priority should be given to finding pieces of depleted uranium and heavily contaminated surfaces. Measures should be taken for the secure storage of any contaminated material recovered.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-of-the-silver/…It say’s the Highest Priority, so we should not be so ready to dismiss the possibility. We must act now to prevent harm in the future.It’s called being Pro-Active.
Also, you should read the research undertaken by Dr. Helen Caldicott . You should know her. She is from Australia and I think she won the Nobel Peace Prize. She does not say DUI does not cause cancer. She says we must look at our options to the possibility. She is a doctor and from Australia and I saw her also on the History Chanel speaking once, so proof is in the pudding.
No idea about RS*, but I’m saying that you would have to get a very large dose for it to be likely to cause cancer in an individual. That in turn means that given the dose rates seen (very small unless you are inside an armoured vehicle hit by it - and there are a small number of survivors of that) the percentage of the population getting cancer as a result will be exceptionally small.
You’re conflating two things here:
[ol][li]Depleted uranium munitions were fired in the Second Persian Gulf War.
[/li][li]In the years after the war, a high number of birth defects have been reported.[/ol]
[/li]It would take careful statistics (which, given the state of Iraq and the way child deaths were exaggerated and obfuscated in an attempt to undermine the sanctions regime probably do not exist) to be sure that birth defects have increased after the war, and to associate them with areas in which DU was used. The problem then is linking it to DU specifically, and that’s much harder. You may not remember the aftermath of the war, but one major feature of it was horrendous air pollution after the Iraqi troops oil wells throughout Kuwait while withdrawing.
The chemicals released when crude oil is burnt with insufficient oxygen and heat (as here) are known to be very nasty indeed, and the entire population plus the troops involved in Desert Shield/Storm will have been exposed. Awkwardly, the population most exposed will also be those potentially most exposed to DU - but because the oil well fires were set by the Iraqis not the Evil Americans™ the press and those interested in shouting about DU aren’t interested.
Then we come on to the really nasty stuff. During the First Persian Gulf War (aka the Iran-Iraq war) Iraq is known to have used large quantities of both Mustard Gas (Yperite) and Organophosphate nerve agents (mostly Tabun, but some Sarin as well and possibly others). These are roughly a million times more toxic than DU, and were used in far larger quantities along the Iran-Iraq border and on rebellious towns inside Iraq. Which also happens mostly to be the south of the country, where the DU exposure would have been.
So while we aren’t denying that it’s possible, Occam’s Razor suggests that it is far from the most likely cause.
What are you going to cut to fund it? The biggest killer among former soldiers is suicide - if you want to spend money on anything, donate it to somewhere like Combat Stress where it will do far more good than lining the pockets of scaremongering researchers.
They laughed at Columbus. They also laughed at Coco the Clown. Some possibilities should be ignored because they’re total bullshit. This is one of them
Alright, I have a premonition that I’ll regret chiming in here, but herman2 actually seems to be interested in learning? If not, feel free to skip this message, especially since I’ll technically be wandering off topic.
I’ll touch on two topics: first, and of least significance, and just a “be careful” comment – the History Channel isn’t a reliable source for anything, and is more geared towards entertainment and commercial programming than actual history. I realize you enjoy their programs, and that’s fine, but you can’t trust anything on it as being accurate without independent (multiple meanings on that word) confirmation.
The second point is more meant to illustrate how games are played with facts and statistics. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression: There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. Your last statement in the quote above is a prime example of my meaning, if you meant it with ANY degree of seriousness.
People play games with numbers. If you go on-line and look up how many scientists believe/disbelieve in climate change, you might get a wide range of numbers, with values all over the place depending on your search engine and the terms used. And probably several of those wildly divergent numbers will be true, despite being wildly different.
How is that possible? Well, if somebody wants to “prove” scientists are split 50-50 on climate change, they’ll pick a broad enough time period to make sure it’s true. Going off the top of my head – I’ve worked with climate scientists and scientists in general and don’t feel like wading through Internet manure to get a current example – one example was measuring opinions of scientists using opinion data going back into the 1980s, with no allowance for opinion change, consideration of additional data, etc. In other words, if way back in 1990, a scientist answered he didn’t find the evidence to be sufficiently convincing, that becomes a “no” vote, and the guy playing with the stats may or may not care that the scientist in question has since changed his/her mind. People will often start throwing “facts” like this around without ever reading – or even checking for the existence of – fine print.
Another part of the game is to muddle the terminology. What’s the difference between climate change (aka “Global Warming”) and Man-made Global Warming/human caused climate change? Actually, there’s a huge difference that I hope I don’t need to elaborate on after having pointed it out. And I won’t even get into what games can be played with surveys by changing the wording or order of questions, not to mention the filters used in analyzing the data.
In addition, you also have to watch out for good ol’ fashioned disinformation. A couple of years ago, those with a specific political agenda made a big deal about a “report” being “suppressed” by the Obama administration. It seems a US Environmental Protection Agency had a scientist on staff who wrote an opinion paper denying climate change! And it was being suppressed for political reasons! Oh my! Hot stuff, scandal, etc, etc! … Until you find out the scientist involved was not a climatologist, nor even a practitioner of a hard science – he was, in fact, an Economist, and totally unqualified to deal with the issues from a climate perspective.
To make a long story short: the actual number of climate scientists who currently believe in climate change is (depending on variables) usually given as being between 97 and 99% (numbers are admittedly off the top of my head). If you change the question a bit, and ask how many believe in human-caused global warming, you will probably get numbers from between maybe 75% (relatively few current sources would be on this low end) to probably about 91%.
Except in the minds of certain politicians and the uninformed, there’s really no debate about climate change. If you watched the news as often as you watched the History Channel, you’d know about the partial collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet, the melting of Greenland’s ice cap, rising sea levels, droughts, greater storm activity, and much else. There’s MORE debate about whether things are caused by a natural cycle or by us humans, but I think that every day there are fewer and fewer scientists who doubt human causation/contribution (Economists aside). http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus
Given the vast amount of history we have about what usually happens when climate changes (rising seas, crop failures, drought, economic upheveal, etc., resulting in displacement of human populations and limited access to dwindling resources – in other words, the roots of WAR), you might want to worry less about DU ammo in Afghanistan, and more about what your local pols are spouting. I think it is more likely for you to thus successfully have a greater, long-lasting impact on both yourself and the planet. JMHO.
And maybe I’ve tossed out something at least to think about concerning statistics and how malleable they are, and how you should consider the source of the info and their biases (as pdf also so ably suggests).
And in advance, I’ll just say I will follow the example of newspapers like the LA Times, which recently decided on a policy of no longer printing letters that deny the reality of climate change. I won’t respond to denials of the facts if people won’t look into the facts honestly. Reality really doesn’t care what you or I or anybody else thinks – but it’s helpful if you at least look at the evidence.
pdf27 and Ardee have covered it better than I could.
I learned a lot from your essay Ardee. The next time I want to know if its going to rain tomorrow, Ill just ask you. If there is anyone that needs to learn, its the pessimists that don’t believe in Depleted Uranium having the potential to cause cancer. If you read Properly I said we should look into the possibility. Its on line 3 of my previous comment. Do you understand what the word means? If it was not possible then why would Republican Senator Jim Mcdermott be able to successfully pass a bill in the Us Senate (which the President approved and passed), requesting more research into the possibility. Why did Belgian pass legislation banning DUI. Why did the German government push for a ban on DUI. What about the moratorium on military use of DUI that many countries and agency’s are pushing for? I guess we should just listen to Ardee and PDF (no offence to PDF’s intelligent input, as I value what he says–just moving forward with my persuasion input), and not listen to what the world community is saying. It is too early to throw in the towel on this subject. It needs to be looked into more. The world community is concerned and I am concerned. I also think funding issues on protecting our vets should not be an issue. If we had billions of dollars to spend on going to war, then please lets have the decency to protect our vets. They say there is no cure for cancer, yet the Cancer charities have millions of dollars which it spends on research. I think money spent on research is in order. We don’t throw in the towel on Cancer research and say its not worth investing because there is no cure. No. We move forward and demand all possible answers to a cure. I don know why you guys can’t give it a possibility. Senator Jim Mcdermott saw the possibility. It’s people like him that care enough to look into possibilities. One day a vet will read my comment and concur with me. Peace Out and God Bless our DUI casualty of war Vets!!!
Just to clarify for you Herman, Depleted Uranium munitions are known as “DU”. Driving a motor vehicle under the influence of drugs, or alcohol is known(among other things) as “DUI” . Also, the “Senator” you cite is not in fact a Senator, nor is he a Republican. The Democrat Congressman is also not a reliable source authority. You really should pay closer attention to your facts.
Don’t trouble Ardee.
Weather forecasts are related to the same science and modelling which predicts climate change. If you don’t accept climate change, don’t waste your time consulting weather forecasts which must be equally unacceptable and baseless, despite their high accuracy as far as a week ahead nowadays.
Nobody is discounting the possibility that depleted uranium (DU, not DUI which usually refers to Driving Under the Influence and has a well proved statistically higher probability of causing harm) might cause cancer, as might just about everything else on the planet including your luminous watch and dental fillings. Certainly there is evidence that DU munitions when fired may cause various illnesses. What is being disputed is your sweeping assertions that because you say there are many unidentified articles claiming the DU causes cancer, birth defects etc then it is clear that DU does such things.
You don’t advance your case by referring selectively to, for example, the Belgian ban on DU. That ban relates essentially to its use as a weapon, along with land mines and other things curiously thought unsporting in a world which allows all sorts of other magnificently destructive and damaging, in the short and long term, weapons in war. Strictly, the Belgian ban on DU is limited to inert DU ammunition and armour plate on Belgian territory. It’s hardly a demonstration of Belgian commitment to stopping the use of radioactive materials which might cause cancer and other nasty consequences of nuclear war, such as being fried on the spot by a thermonuclear weapon. The Belgian law carefully avoided banning the nuclear weapons held on a US air base in Belgium which, in the event of a major European war, the Belgian legislators so concerned with possible risks from DU are apparently happy to see dropped on people to their east in a magnificent display of nuclear death and destruction which would make Hiroshima look quite modest.
You was posting while I was typing.
DU can’t cause birth defects or cancer where it was never used, or used sparingly like a decade ago…