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Depleted uranium birth defects

WhatRoughBeast said:
Conceivable, but I do hope you realise that the depletion process is the flip side of the enrichment process for reactor/weapons uranium. Any reduction in depletion means that the good stuff isn't quite as good as it would otherwise be. There may be economic reasons for not extracting as much U235 as possible. Anyone with expertise want to weigh in?
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Perhaps the demand for DU munitions has grown faster than the demand for enriched fuel?
 
Just as a practical sideline concerning the "natural" background radiation vs. "man-made" levels:

The watchmaking school I attended has been in business since 1925, though it has shifted buildings on the campus a few times. The equipment, watchmaking benches, etc. moved with the classroom each time, however. In the early 90's, based on concerns about possible contamination from radium watch dials and hands, the school was surveyed by the Feds. A couple of the benches were MILDLY above the normal background count, not even enough to really mention. We used a large ice bucket full of lead shot for storing radioactive luminous dials, hands, etc -- some used, some new old stock that had been donated to the school by alumni when they retired (and possibly quite valuable, like a never-installed replacement radium dial for a Rolex, still in the original packaging). No cause for concern was found in the watchmaking classroom.

What DID send their detection equipment bouncing all over the place were the polished granite stalls in the bathrooms. The levels were a considerable multiple of the "normal" background count. We joked that it was safer to use the hedge at the end of the parking lot. We went as far as designating a Mens and Ladies Tree.

As pointed out, DU is a heavy metal, and has all the associated toxic risks with it. It's just because it's "nuclear" that people go <snip> paranoid over it, like the one community in California that wouldn't allow a truckload of Vietnam-era napalm bombs to pass through on the way to a disposal facility, while easily allowing over twenty-five times the amount of gasoline (the active component in napalm; the rest is just gelling agent) to come into their city and be pumped around in the form of tanker trucks refueling their service stations. Why? Because it was NAPALM, and therefore dangerous.

Beanbag


Edited by Loss Leader: 
Edited to delete poorly-masked profanity as per Rule 10.
 
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Beanbag said:
~snip~As pointed out, DU is a heavy metal, and has all the associated toxic risks with it. It's just because it's "nuclear" that people go <snip> paranoid over it, like the one community in California that wouldn't allow a truckload of Vietnam-era napalm bombs to pass through on the way to a disposal facility, while easily allowing over twenty-five times the amount of gasoline (the active component in napalm; the rest is just gelling agent) to come into their city and be pumped around in the form of tanker trucks refueling their service stations. Why? Because it was NAPALM, and therefore dangerous.

Beanbag
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It comes down to acceptable risk. people need gasoline so they accept the risk of a gas explosion and the long term effects of carbon dioxide and monoxides. People can't use NAPALM and so won't accept the risk of it being trucked through thier "back yards". Even though the risks are much less than trucking gasoline.

People need electricity so they are more amenable to the risks of nuclear energy (which are illustrated by Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima) But they can't use nuclear waste so they are opposed to the risk of having nuclear waste shipped to a proper storage facility via their city and county streets.

That sense of risk is transfered over to DU materials.
 
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Tricky said:
Do you mean that the radioactivity is not an issue at all? I realize it's "depleted", but I'd be surprised if there aren't at least some negative effects from the radiation. Perhaps they are overwhelmed by the toxicity issues, but still...
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Depleted only means that the U-235 is much less than the natural ratio because the U-235 has been removed for nuclear energy uses. DU is almost entirely U-238.
 
Because of its greater density than lead, DU is commonly used for control surface mass balances on aircraft. Less volume for the same weight.
 
WhatRoughBeast said:
Conceivable, but I do hope you realise that the depletion process is the flip side of the enrichment process for reactor/weapons uranium. Any reduction in depletion means that the good stuff isn't quite as good as it would otherwise be. There may be economic reasons for not extracting as much U235 as possible. Anyone with expertise want to weigh in?
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Well it's difficult and expensive to separate out U235 but the latter is far more useful, basically the nearly pure U238 DU is a waste material with other uses.
Producing reactor grade Uranium (~5% U235) leaves about ten times as much DU though some is chemically extracted from spent reactor fuel, where most of the U235 has been fissioned.

uruk said:
Another concern is that DU is pyrophoric, which means that DU will ignite when sufficiently heated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrophoricity

Yet another way for DU to be come aerosolized.
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For military purposes that is an advantage of DU over Tungsten; much greater chance of destroying a target through igniting fuel or munitions.

fuelair said:
I was also told by a reliable source several years ago that they were working on a plastic/ceramic material that could be even more effective and no radiation problem at al. Unfortunately he was very ill at the time - and I have not seen him since.
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That strikes me as odd, I have good contacts in the materials sciences and I haven't heard anything along those lines; it'd have to be a high density ceramic, the main reason for using DU in kinetic energy munitions is its density.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Well are granite counter tops a serious radiological hazard? It is a bit more than that, but way less than living on top of granite.
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Living on granite exposes you to inhaled Radon, also an alpha emitter, which can cause lung cancer. In fact it's considered to be the greatest causative factor in lung cancer in non smokers.
 
I Ratant said:
Because of its greater density than lead, DU is commonly used for control surface mass balances on aircraft. Less volume for the same weight.
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It's also used in radiation shielding and, as I mentioned previously, has been used in dentures.
 
BenBurch said:
Depleted only means that the U-235 is much less than the natural ratio because the U-235 has been removed for nuclear energy uses. DU is almost entirely U-238.
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Technically Uranium with any level of U235 below the natural level of 0.72% could be considered depleted; the US NRC defines it as less than 0.711% U235. However most DU sold contains less than 0.3% U235 and the US military only uses DU than is <0.2% U235.
U235 is expensive and valuable generally as much is extracted as possible.
 
catsmate1 said:
Technically Uranium with any level of U235 below the natural level of 0.72% could be considered depleted; the US NRC defines it as less than 0.711% U235. However most DU sold contains less than 0.3% U235 and the US military only uses DU than is <0.2% U235.
U235 is expensive and valuable generally as much is extracted as possible.
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I think that's what I said! :)
 
BenBurch said:
It is an alpha emitter. I would not want to take any aerosolized or vaporized U-238 into my lungs.
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But at the point is it radioactive enough to be a bigger problem than the heavy metal poisoning you are getting from it?
 
Ban DU and allow the tanks through to kill the parents. Solved: no births, no birth defects.
 
Pulvinar said:
Ban DU and allow the tanks through to kill the parents. Solved: no births, no birth defects.
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Or use the W/Ni or W/Ni/Co alloys that we know are far more carcinogenic than DU for the penetrators.
 
uruk said:
It comes down to acceptable risk. people need gasoline so they accept the risk of a gas explosion and the long term effects of carbon dioxide and monoxides. People can't use NAPALM and so won't accept the risk of it being trucked through thier "back yards". Even though the risks are much less than trucking gasoline.

People need electricity so they are more amenable to the risks of nuclear energy (which are illustrated by Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima) But they can't use nuclear waste so they are opposed to the risk of having nuclear waste shipped to a proper storage facility via their city and county streets.

That sense of risk is transfered over to DU materials.
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In other words: people generally are stupid and should not be listened to.
 
Tricky said:
Do you mean that the radioactivity is not an issue at all? I realize it's "depleted", but I'd be surprised if there aren't at least some negative effects from the radiation. Perhaps they are overwhelmed by the toxicity issues, but still...
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To expand on what others have already said - natural uranium ore has 0.72% U-235, with the rest being U-238 (plus some trace amount of U-234). U-238 has a half-life of ~4.5 billion years, which means that it's barely radioactive at all. U-235 has a half-life of 700 million years. Which means that it's barely radioactive as well. Both are are alpha emitters, so the type of radiation isn't any more dangerous either. U-235 is useful because it's fissile, not because it's radioactive. That means if you hit it with a neutron, it will break up and release energy along with more neutrons. But if you don't hit it with anything, it's actually pretty stable.

This is actually similar to plutonium, which most people think of as particularly dangerous. Pu-239 has a half-life of tens of thousands of years. That's far shorter than uranium, but is still long enough that you can happily sit around with a lump of it on your desk and not have any problems. That's actually exactly what happened at Los Alamos - test lumps were used as paper weights and doorstops. They knew there was no danger from it, and wanted to see what would happen to it in terms of oxidation and so on when left out in the environment.

So depleted uranium doesn't mean uranium that's had all the horrible dangerous stuff taken out, it means uranium that's had the useful, but not really any more dangerous, stuff taken out. That doesn't mean there can never be any danger from it. But even natural, undepleted uranium isn't really radioactive enough to cause problems from short term exposure, from the radiation at least.

DNA Thief said:
So, from what I can follow, radioactivity isn't the problem, heavy metal toxicity is. That would result in the same symptoms as lead poisoning?
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Not necessarily. Heavy metals tend to be toxic, but not all in exactly the same way. Lead poisoning tends to have different symptoms from mercury poisoning, for example. Uranium is actually less toxic than many other heavy metals. But "less toxic than arsenic" isn't necessarily a great selling point.

RecoveringYuppy said:
I have no idea how prevalent the process is, but there is a second way to get depleted uranium: From reprocessing spent fuel rods. That source would have the risk of being contaminated with fission byproductions.
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Generally it's not particularly prevalent, precisely because of that last part. Cleaning up spent fuel so that it contains just uranium and not all the nasty stuff that makes it dangerous and radioactive in the first place just isn't that easy. After all, if it was easy nuclear waste wouldn't really be a problem. Since there's not really a shortage of DU, there's no need to play around with the nastier stuff in order to get more.
 
Either way .. one deformed infant, however sad it might be, proves nothing. You need statistics for that (even more sad I'm afraid).
Anyway if someone states some infant was deformed because of DU, he should also state the connection between infant and DU. We have to be sure it's not just random photo from the internet. Cases like that are very common with protesters against anything.

As for the radiation .. yes, uranium might not be hot enough to really harm grown healthy human. But we talk about embryo or fetus developing inside mothers .. or even the fathers sperm. Those can be damaged by even single ionization event. Sure, alpha is almost safely out of the question. That is only harmful in lungs when breathed in, or digestive tract, when eaten.
So while some radiation is acceptable for most people, usually no radiation amount is taken as acceptable for pregnant mothers. Still it's pretty gray area, there is too little data to really know anything about it.
 
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ponderingturtle said:
But at the point is it radioactive enough to be a bigger problem than the heavy metal poisoning you are getting from it?
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We'd be using some heavy metal for munitions. Lead is no good. You can get Tungsten poisoning. All toxic.

But DU is both toxic AND a radiological hazard.

So, the question to ask is which is the least bad choice factoring in both munition efficacy and resulting toxic waste contamination.
 
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