DEPLETING THE OBJECTIONS

Assessing America's nuclear detritus: Uranium: The use of radioactive ordnance is cheered by U.S. military officials but decried by health officials overseas. (Deborah Blum, June 8, 2003, Baltimore Sun)

As always, it's a mistake to think of a battleground as something that can just be tidied up. What conflict hasn't produced decades' worth of hazardous war souvenirs? You can still occasionally dig up the rusting bullets of our 19th-century Civil War in the mountains of the Southeast. There remain regions in France still marked by the chemical poisons of World War I. The land mines placed in wars, small and large, continue to maim the innocent in Asia and Africa. And in Japan, the destructive effects of World War II's ultimate radioactive weapon may have been repaired, but they have certainly not been forgotten.

Should DU bullets be classified in this company? Rationally, of course, there's no comparing anti-tank munitions with the legacy of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, "Fat Man" and "Little Boy." Some remnant tons of slightly radioactive metal should barely flicker on the environmental threat meter. If the rest of the world would just be more rational, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

That kind of exasperated reasoning approaches the position of the Pentagon and, in fact, many independent scientists. Robert L. Park of the American Physical Society is downright sarcastic on the question: "I always figured it would be a lot better to be shot with a uranium bullet than a dum-dum - it should make a good clean hole. Physicists don't spend much time worrying about natural uranium, and DU is even less radioactive by about 40 percent." [...]

So what is it about DU bullets that makes our military swoon? Depleted uranium is a byproduct of weapons processing. Remove the lighter, more radioactive isotopes for bomb production and you're left with something like the world's heaviest rock. DU is almost twice as dense as lead. It was this big-bad-stone-in-a-slingshot potential that first attracted weapons scientists.

But then they discovered something even better. Other metals, from tungsten to steel, flatten on impact. But the uranium heats, peeling back from the bullet's point. In effect, it self-sharpens, meaning that it can tear into armored tanks with unparalleled force. As Naughton said: "We don't want to fight even. Nobody goes into a war and wants to be even with the enemy. We want to be ahead, and DU gives us that advantage."

It also means we can end battles quickly, surely a good thing. If by doing that, DU bullets save lives and if the radiation is a minor issue, it's fair to ask why other people dislike them so much. [...]

In the 12 years of testing, they've found no such poisoning, no radiation-linked cancers, no patterns of uranium-sparked disease. U.N. studies conducted in Kosovo and Bosnia came up similarly empty on health effects.

You ever notice that countries that have no whaling industry oppose whaling? Similarly, the Europeans oppose effective weaponry. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 10, 2003 12:16 AM