I work at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory - Kesselring Site Operation. I’m employed by the Navy as an Engineering Laboratory Technician… which involves a fair bit of health physics. I do not speak with the authority of KAPL-KSO, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Energy, or claim to be an expert on this subject.
I do know a bit about it, though.
Uranium is still a heavy metal and still radioactive, even if it doesn’t have much U-235 in it. If anyone is calling bullshit on you it’s on the “wee pointy metal bits” line you seem so stuck on.
Ceramic and glass are not mutually exclusive terms. Metal dusts, BTW, will usually burn quite well. Uranium, as already mentioned, is pyrophoric when finely divided… which means that it burns spontaneously at normal temperatures.
No, it is not possible for uranium as a fine metallic dust to exist as a left-over from a DU munition… Uranium dust will burn, producing uranium oxide. The uranium oxide, in the superheated environment of a shell impact, will form ~10micron ceramic uranium (which is not made of uranium metal, but from oxide) spheres.
Except for the already noted problem that uranium metal powder is pyrophorric.
Knowledge of chemistry or physics is hardly lacking on this board. If he was fundamentally wrong, he would have been called on it.
One of the neat things about chemistry is that you can generally predict the reactive behaviors of damn near anything. Classes of elements behave in consistent ways and bond in consistent ways. Formations of oxides are hardly an unknown concept. The heat and force of a DU penetrator impact if anything would make oxide formation more likely if you understand the factors that influence reaction rates.
I’m a vet of Gulf War I. I ate Army MRE’s (the greatest danger to our Armed Forces by far; the Potatoes Au’Rotten alone should merit a Bio Hazard sticker, IMO), got Anthrax Shots, took the Anti-Nerve Agent Pills, and sat in the turret of an M1-A1 Abrams for four months (not constantly, you know; that would just be wierd) next to a butt-load of M829A1 APFSDS-T rounds, and I can say with the utmost authority that I’m fine!
You bet yer ass he ain’t! I’m a Life Member of the N.R.A., and any red-suited freak tries skinnying down my chimney in the dark A.M. is gonna get an ass-load of depleted uranium butt-seeking 00!
Experience has taught me that the very LAST thing a person who believes he’s suffering from a scientifically dubious “mystery” ailment wants is truth. The only thing they’ll believe is their personal self-delusion-confirming bullshit and crackpottery, especially if it comes from personal anecdotes.
Specifically, you said the above and it is with things like this, that make me flinch and question,–here is what you said above,–Metal dusts, BTW, will usually burn quite well. Did you notice the word “usually”? That pertains to my questioning specific materials and your lack of a cite. I will take what you say as the truth in this matter however.
The scientific evidence, such as that supplied in The Science of the Silver Bullet in Scientific American and other reputable scientific sources tell us very reliably that depleted uranium, if it’s a measurable health hazard at all, is a very tiny one and is utterly dwarfed by common natural and man-made environmental risk sources. The most comprehensive report indicates that the potential toxicity involved – either chemical or radiologic – is orders of magnitude below any extant chemical or radiological safety guidelines.
Unless you inhale DU dust in pound quantities, it poses no real health risk.
Webelo11 has been frothing himself into a frenzy over something far less dangerous than breathing in Los Angeles or Denver.
And because this one site says so, your going to believe it, even after so much else has been shown on this thread? Oh well, that is your choice, but let me see now, has our government ever cheated its people, or has it ever used propaganda thru other people or has it ever outright lied or has it ever taught others and big business to lie cheat and subsequently steal from hard working people?
Has it ever misdirected people and what about the spherical glass that is small enough to enter the soldiers blood and lymphatic systems and do those little glass spheres clog up the works as they are hard and nothing in the blood or lymphatic systems have anything hard in them?
Believe what you want, but I think the American public is becoming much more aware.
Cite, please? Why on Earth should uranium that has been stripped of as much radioactive material as possible have a “longer biological half-life than other forms of uranium”? Sounds like conspiracy-oriented crackpottery to me…
The stuff’s very close to totally benign. Working in your garden exposes you to hundreds of times more naturally occurring uranium dust and other radioactives in just the top 1 mm of soil than even the highest dosage of DU exposure in warfare will possibly expose you!
You mean after so much ignorant, anti-scientific bullshit from you and so much scientific proof from everyone else that demonstrates conclusively that you don’t have even the tiniest clue about what you’re blithering so inanely about, don’t you? I’ll stick with the facts. And since you’re asking me to choose between Scientific American and your misguided, ignorant ravings, I choose Scientific American!
Let me see if I’ve got this right: You’re claiming that since one or more people in the U.S. Government have misled us at certain times in the past (note that it’s impossible for “the government” to mislead anyone), every syllable – every single jot and tittle issued by every person who was in any way employed by any government agency – is a lie.
Got it.
Furthermore, you’re saying that since the esteemed and highly reputable scientific publication Scientific American has the word “American” in it, it must therefore be a product of “the government”, and must therefore be nothing but lies.
Yep; you’re perfectly sane. And what an intelligent and effective rebuttal you’ve offered!
That and the other potential health effects have been scientifically evaluated by many countries and many scientific institutions and that and the others have been found to be either very minor or thoroughly ridiculous. Inhaling DU is safer than breathing smog!
Yes, just like they’re becoming ever more aware that aliens won WWII and that pigs live in trees and housepets’ tiny little minds can be read by psychics. The best rule of thumb tells us from experience that the extent to which the American public believes something is always inversely proportional to the truth.
You’re as right as the American public is that Saddam was behind 9/11, Mr. Webelo. Your claims and arguments are delusional, I’m afraid. Nothing personal.
No they are the words for “there are occasional exeptions”
You are clinging to the minutest fraction of a chance like you are defending a stay of execution. As about 5 other posters have pointed out, this stuff is about as dangerous as dishwashing liquid. Of course if many people got hit by a bottle of dishwashing liquid fired from the main gun of an M1 Abrams, we would be discussing the hazards of inhaled dishwashing liquid aerosolized by the impact.
I said generally in reference to chemistry as a whole, not to your topic. I didn’t use the word “usually” in the post you quoted
Back in my EMT days we called your apparent manner of thinking “zebra chasing”.
When you see a black horse, do you think horse, or that someone has cleverly concealed a stolen zebra by painting over the white areas.
For what it’s worth, Jurph, your cites have long been discredited.
See, for just one example of such discrediting: The Science of the Silver Bullet, in Scientific American. I can supply additional discrediting citations if you ask.
Your claims are laughable, uninformed nonsense, bob. Your cite is by a nun with a political agenda who lacked nearly all of the scientific data and has long since been utterly discredited by genuine scientific research. That site, along with all the others that try to make the same points, remains active and frequently cited only because her bullshit is appealing to conspiracy nutjobs. It’s called confirmation bias – look into it.
Since you have no clue as to what you’re saying, let me elaborate a bit about Alpha radiation: It’s harmful radius of action is measured in microns! It is so pathetically weak that it can be completely and totally stopped and eliminated by a single-sheet thickness of paper!
In order to be harmful to health, the DU dust and its attendant alpha emissions must lodge itself almost impossibly within bone marrow. It’s theoretically possible, but you’d expect it to happen perhaps about one time in billions of exposures.
Furthermore, the 60 or so most highly DU-exposed U.S. soldiers have been almost monomaniacally examined for health problems for more than a decade, and nothing – repeat, NOTHING – has so far been found by any doctors or other medical experts. Your claim of “3000 to 21000 cancer deaths” is a truly absurd and utterly bogus pile of anti-scientific excrement.
To be fair to Jurph, I think he was trying to illustrate to **BoyScout11 ** how a defence of the original hypothesis might conceivably be constructed though the use of cites. I believe this was in the hope, whose flame flickered briefly, that this long and sprawling mess could be nurtured into a vibrant citizen of the GD community of threads. I do not believe that the cites reflect his own views. I may be confused, however. Sadly the flame died long ago. And the citizen? Heretical and renegade.
