Theos-Talk Archives (December 2001 Message tt00045)

The Truth about NATO Uranium 
by 
A. Dmitriev 

Slaviansky Mir Information Agency 
MOSCOW - 16 February, 2001 

Translated from the Russian 

According to experts from the Russian Nuclear Center "Arzamas-16", the
depleted uranium used in American weaponry is actually depleted reactor
uranium, not a by-product of the enrichment of natural uranium, but
processed nuclear fuel containing a high concentration of radioactive
isotopes, RADIOACTIVE WASTE in other words. 

There are different kinds of uranium. Natural uranium, which consists
more than 99% of the isotope U-238, is slightly alpha-radioactive.
Alpha-radiating dust becomes an internal radiation source when it enters
a live organism and provokes oncological diseases. But alpha particles
may be stopped by air or a thin sheet of paper: External exposure to
U-238 leads only to insignificant irradiation. Forty years ago uranium
salts were sold in photo shops for the "browning" of photographs. 

"Depleted" uranium is used in weaponry not to cause a nuclear explosion,
but rather for its firmness and high density (around 19 gr./cc). The
kinetic energy of a uranium core is very high, and has correspondingly
high penetrating power. 

For this purpose other metals, tungsten, for example, are also suitable.
Uranium, however, possesses another characteristic - the ability to
ignite on impact with another object, like magnesium - and this
incendiary action gives the weapon the special effectiveness often
boasted of by NATO officials. 

Artillery experts who've performed comparative field tests of
projectiles report that a tungsten core causes only mechanical
destruction, puncturing a hole in a plate of armor with splintering on
the back side. An analogous uranium-core projectile, on the other hand,
produces a "wondrous" effect, bringing the punctured armor plate to near
white-heat, after which it continues to "contort" for five minutes or
so. 

Now let's clear up some misconceptions around the term "depleted
uranium" (DU). DU is a by-product of the separation of natural uranium
into its two constituent components, U-238 and U-235. This extremely
complex, many-staged and expensive process extracts from uranium ore its
approximately one percent U-235 constituent, which is then used in
nuclear weapons. 

After the U-235 has been separated out, "depleted" uranium, that is
uranium depleted of its U-235 isotope, remains, a waste product similar
to the tailings left over after the extraction of gold from gold ore.
For a long time no use was made of DU, until someone hit upon the idea
of using it as a replacement for tungsten in armor-piercing projectiles.


Of course the use of DU in projectiles and other conventional
(non-nuclear) weapons does nothing to improve the Earth's ecology, and
the damage is worsened by the incendiary and explosive nature of uranium
(even of the "depleted" sort), because uranium is a potent chemical
poison (like beryllium or arsenic, for example). Uranium projectiles are
not merely incendiary and armor-piercing weapons: they're chemical
weapons as well, and as such their use is a war crime. 

As it turns out, this is far from the whole story on NATO's uranium. 

Specialists were puzzled by reports of radiation sickness among NATO
personnel who had participated in the alliance's aggression against
Yugoslavia. Contact with ordinary DU would be unlikely to lead to such
sudden and widespread illness. When reports surfaced of U-232 and U-236
traces, however, everything became crystal-clear. 

The main issue is that these isotopes, with half-lives from a few months
to several decades, are extremely hazardous, both as chemical poisons
and as radioactive elements. What's more, they're not present in natural
uranium. They're produced in atomic reactors as a by-product of the
fission process. For purposes of obtaining plutonium or for electric
generation natural uranium is loaded into the reactor. After processing
in the reactor plutonium may extraced from the spent fuel, leaving
behind a waste product known as reactor depleted uranium (reactor DU, or
RDU). This is not mere uranium, but a hellish mixture of extremely
"hot", wildly fissioning radioactive isotopes, among which the isotopes
U-232 and U-236 are present. Reactor DU is hundreds, even thousands of
times more radioactive than natural DU. 

The presence of these isotopes in areas where uranium weapons were used
in Yugoslavia is incontrovertible proof that projectile cores used by
the US and NATO were composed of RDU, not of DU. In other words, these
are not just armor-piercing, incendiary, and chemical weapons, but
radiological weapons too! 

It's known that the Americans planned back in the fifties to use
radioactive waste products in their weaponry. The idea was scrapped
mainly because the use of such weapons would have created a threat for
American soldiers advancing over the contaminated territory. Their use
in Western Europe was deemed inexpedient. Instead, "clean" neutron bombs
were developed for use in a "limited nuclear conflict in Europe". 

But the old idea of radiological weapons was to surface again later,
this time with the aim of the advantageous utilization of American
radioactive waste in Europe under the guise of conventional weaponry.
Instead of spending money on the the storage of RDU, the Americans
loaded it into bombs and projectiles to be used far from America's
borders. 

It's worth noting that contamination caused by reactor uranium, whether
in the Chernobyl disaster or in American weaponry, is far more dangerous
and long-lived than that caused by a "conventional" nuclear explosion. 

The Chernobyl disaster led to a similar ignition and pulverization of
reactor uranium. The scale was similar too: American planes dropped tons
of radioactive waste over Yugoslavia. [The quantity of DU (or RDU)
dropped by Anglo-American forces over Iraq was even greater - up to 300
tons according to some sources. - Webmaster] 

. . . 

Less than two years after the the latest Balkan War and ten years after
the War in the Gulf it is revealed that the radioactive weaponry used by
NATO [Anglo-American, in the case of the Gulf War - Webmaster] leaders
has led to the deaths of more people than all other weapons combined.
How is it that that the Western mass-media, which have covered these
wars from a strictly pro-NATO point of view up until now, have "gone off
the rails" of official propaganda (and not only over the uranium issue)?
Maybe this is an attempt to inculcate in the minds of the people the
idea of the possibility, even inevitability, of "limited" nuclear war,
first of a "low intensity", and later "conventional" variety? 

The idea of abandoning traditional methods of international aggression
and replacing them with cheap, "small", Hiroshima-like nuclear strikes
ripened shortly after the Gulf War, which war was less of a victory for
the forces of the "international community" than is commonly claimed by
official propaganda. At that time the idea of "new limited nuclear war"
was thrown onto the table, as "a nuclear response to the threat (?!) of
the use of non-nuclear weapons of mass-destruction", or under the
slogan: "limited use of nuclear weapons against terrorist and
totalitarian regimes" (from the Draft Nuclear Doctrine of Great
Britain). 

Indeed, why arm and maintain millions-strong armies, send thousands of
planes and tanks into battle, transport hundreds of tons of weaponry,
when one can send a single nuclear-armed "Tomahawk" to a target
thousands of miles away and demand capitulation? 



Added to Site: 20 Feb. 2001 - Last modified: 20 Feb. 2001 
The Russian-language original of this article was obtained from the 
Slaviansky Mir website 




URL of this page: 
http://eairc.boom.ru/reports/uran.html 


-----Original Message-----
From: nos [mailto:nos@granite.net.au] 
Sent: Tuesday, 4 December 2001 6:37 PM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: Theos-World PEARL HARBOR II: The Technology of Manipulation


http://www1.jaring.my/just/FO-forbiddentruth.html

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Kier [mailto:dennw3k@earthlink.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, 4 December 2001 10:14 AM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Theos-World PEARL HARBOR II: The Technology of Manipulation


> On December 7, 1941 a surprise Japanese air-attack over Pearl
Harbor resulted in 4574 casualties (killed, injured, and missing), 177
aircraft, two destroyers, two squadron minesweepers and a lot of smaller
vessels destroyed. That day went into US history as a "day of infamy".
This has been pounded into the heads of all American schoolchildren for
the last 60 years. But what's been beaten out of their heads just as
insistently?

DK>>>>>>>>>>
Only 2 destroyers, and two minesweepers got hit? Where did all those
battleships come from that we all see burning from the old news-reels?

I have been in Pearl Harbor (about 50 years ago), and at that time the
Battleship Arizona was sitting at the bottom of the bay, still leaking
oil, and still in commission, even though sunk.

These wild fantacies of yours make for interesting reading, but you
should remember that some of us have been around more than a couple of
years, and know enough to know that you are not dealing with a full
deck, so to speak.

If the battleships had not been destroyed, we would have fought most of
the Pacific war with battleships, which is what the admirals preferred
being on, rather than with aircraft carriers.

I was in the Navy over there in the early 1950s, and your "facts" don't
square with reality, that I have seen and experienced.

Dennis




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