I appreciate and applaud your devotion to a general anti-war stance.
But going on about this is not productive. The wiki site you provided states that depleted uranium (DU) has 60% of the radioactivity of normal, natural uranium you would find in the ground, which is virtually indistinguishable from background radiation (the level which we are exposed to all the time).
If you walked down the high street with a Geiger counter, you would be hard pressed to see any difference in the readings if you were to pass by a skip full of uranium, even less so for DU. Radioactivity is just not an issue where DU as a weapon is concerned - it was chosen entirely because it is both very dense (and thus great for slamming into armoured targets) and there are shedloads of it lying about for next to nothing thanks to the nuclear energy and weapons programs.
Yes, it is toxic - I wouldn't want to handle any without protective gear - and yes, bits of it flake off the used bullets and cause horrible diseases. But that is because of its high chemical reactivity (not radioactivity) and toxicity as a heavy metal, just like lead or mercury.
DU is a battlefield weapon for use against armoured targets. Nobody would choose a bullet for its potential to caue a slow and debilitating illness, that would be completely pointless in such a context.
(, Sat 29 Dec 2012, 13:16, Share, Reply)