Gunner's
mates inspect linked belts of Mark 149 Mod 2 20mm ammunition before
loading it into the magazine of a Mark 16 Phalanx close-in weapons
system aboard the battleship USS MISSOURI (BB-63). (Uploader's note,
those are probably Firecontrolman, the maintainers of Phalanx, not
Gunners mates.)
The
US Army has awarded General Dynamics a $12 million contract to
deconstruct and dispose of 78,000 depleted uranium anti-tank shells. The
Pentagon’s May 6 announcement calls for “demilitarization” of the aging
shells, as newer depleted uranium rounds are added to the US arsenal.
In
the perpetually profitable business of war production, General Dynamics
originally produced and sold some of the 120-millimeter anti-tank
rounds to the Army. One of the richest weapons builders on earth,
General Dynamics has 95,000 employees and sells its wares in 40
countries on six continents.
The
International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons
in Manchester, England, reports the armor-piercing shells to be
disassembled are thought to be the large 105-millimeter and
120-millimeter anti-tank rounds.
Depleted uranium, or DU, weapons
are made of extremely dense uranium-238. More than 700,000 tons of DU
has been left as waste in the US alone from the production of nuclear
weapons and nuclear reactor fuel rods. The urankum-238 is left when
fissionable uranium-235 is separated for H-bombs and reactor fuel. DU is
only ‘depleted’ of this U-235. It is still a radioactive and toxic
heavy metal. A tax and ecological liability, DU is given away free to
weapons builders.
Read More Here
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Sources
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the enriching of natural uranium for use in
nuclear reactors. When most of the
fissile radioactive
isotopes of uranium are removed from natural uranium, the residue is called depleted uranium. A less common source of the material is
reprocessed spent reactor fuel. The origin can be distinguished by the content of
uranium-236,
[1] produced by
neutron capture from uranium-235 in
nuclear reactors.
As a
toxic and
radioactive waste product that requires long term storage as low level
nuclear waste,
depleted uranium is costly to keep but relatively inexpensive to
obtain. Generally the only real costs are those associated with
conversion of UF
6 to metal. It is extremely
dense, 67% denser than
lead, only slightly less than
tungsten and
gold, and just 16% less dense than
osmium or
iridium,
the densest naturally occurring substances known. Its low cost makes it
attractive for a variety of uses. However, the material is prone to
corrosion and small particles are
pyrophoric.
[2]
History
Depleted uranium was first stored in stockpiles in the 1940s when the U.S. and
USSR began their
nuclear weapons and
nuclear power programs. While it is possible to design
civilian power reactors with unenriched fuel, only about 10% of reactors ever built utilize that technology, and both nuclear weapons production and
naval reactors
require the concentrated isotope. Originally, DU was conserved in the
hope that more efficient enrichment techniques would allow further
extraction of the fissile isotope; however, those hopes have not
materialized.
In the 1970s,
The Pentagon reported that the
Soviet military had developed armor plating for
Warsaw Pact tanks that
NATO ammunition couldn't penetrate. The Pentagon began searching for material to make
denser bullets. After testing various metals,
ordnance
researchers settled on depleted uranium. DU was useful in ammunition
not only because of its unique physical properties and effectiveness,
but also because it was cheap and readily available.
Tungsten, the only other candidate, had to be sourced from
China.
With DU stockpiles estimated to be more than 500,000 tons, the
financial burden of housing this amount of low-level radioactive waste
was very apparent. It was therefore more economical to use depleted
uranium rather than storing it. Thus, from the late 1970s, the
U.S., the
Soviet Union,
Britain and
France, began converting their stockpiles of depleted uranium into
kinetic energy penetrators.
Photographic evidence of destroyed equipment suggests that DU was first used during the 1973
Arab-Israeli war. Various written reports cite information that was obtained as a consequence of that use.
[1]
However,
while clearing the decades-old Hawaii Stryker firing range, workers
have found chemical weapons from World War I era and depleted uranium
ammunition from the 1960s
[3].
The U.S. military used DU shells in the
1991 Gulf War and the
2003 Iraq War (Associated Press, August 12, 2006, free archived copy at:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0812-06.htm most recently visited November 1, 2006).
Production and availability
Natural uranium metal contains about 0.71%
U-235, 99.28%
U-238, and about 0.0054%
U-234. In order to produce
enriched uranium, the process of
isotope separation removes a substantial portion of the U-235 for use in nuclear power, weapons, or other uses. The remainder,
depleted uranium,
contains only 0.2% to 0.4% U-235. Because natural uranium begins with
such a low percentage of U-235, the enrichment process produces large
quantities of depleted uranium. For example, producing 1 kg of 5%
enriched uranium requires 11.8 kg of natural uranium, and leaves about
10.8 kg of depleted uranium with only 0.3% U-235 remaining.
The
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) defines
depleted uranium as uranium with a percentage of the
235U isotope that is less than 0.711% by weight (See
10 CFR 40.4.) The military specifications designate that the DU used by
DoD contain less than 0.3%
235U (AEPI, 1995). In actuality, DoD uses only DU that contains approximately 0.2%
235U (AEPI, 1995).
Depleted Uranium Stocks as of end of 1999
| Holder | Country | Approximate DU Stocks [t U] |
|---|
| as UF6 | as U3O8 | as metal | TOTAL |
DOE  , USEC | USA a) | 470,000 | 10,000 | 480,000 |
| Russia b) | 450,000 | 10,000 | 460,000 |
| COGEMA , EURODIF | France | 50,000 | 140,000 | | 190,000 |
| BNFL | United Kingdom | 30,000 | | | 30,000 |
| Urenco | Germany, Netherlands, UK | 16,000 | | | 16,000 |
| JNC , JNFL | Japan c) | 10,000 | | | 10,000 |
| CNNC | China d) | 2,000 | | | 2,000 |
| KAERI | Rep. of Korea | 200 | | | 200 |
| South Africa | 4 | 69 | 73 |
| TOTAL | 1,028,204 | 160,069 | 1,188,273 |
t = metric tonne
a) As of mid-2000. See also: Compostion of the U.S. DOE Depleted Uranium Inventory (70k PDF).
For more recent and detailed data, download Inventory of depleted uranium tails, Oct. 2, 2007 (PDF - U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce)
b) Estimate based on: Depleted Uranium from Enrichment, Uranium Institute, London 1996
c) As of February 2001
d) As of end of 2000
Source: OECD NEA 2001
Source: WISE Uranium Project
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