Article: 141732 of alt.peeves From: Till Poser Newsgroups: alt.peeves Subject: Re: It Was Only A Matter Of Time... Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2000 12:15:19 +0200 Organization: T-Online Lines: 69 Message-ID: <393B7DB7.7EC71590@t-online.de> References: <8he8g7$s68$1@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net> <393B1923.B2639CBB@netgate.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: news.t-online.com 960200201 16 12071 0308936580-0099 000605 10:16:41 X-Complaints-To: abuse@t-online.de X-Sender: 0308936580-0099@t-dialin.net X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [de] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: de,en-US Path: news1.meer.net!news3.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!newsmm00.btx.dtag.de!t-online.de!news.t-online.com!not-for-mail Xref: news1.meer.net alt.peeves:141732 Rick Gordon schrieb: > > Geoff Miller wrote: > > > [Lead sinkers are an abomination and must be replaced ...] > > To my mind, however, the choice is obvious: depleted uranium. > > I need a clarification. For some reason I always thought that "depleted > uranium" was so called because it had been depleted of whatever useful > stuff it had before it was depleted. That useful stuff is U235, which occurs in natural Uranium at 0.7%. DU, as its friends call it, has only 0.2 - 0.3 %. U238 is an alpha-radiator with a significant spontaneous fission-probability. In that mode it produces a about 3.5 neutrons per fission. It has an overall half life of 4.5 x10^9 years. > Neutrons, maybe, or alpha particles, > bosons, or caffeine. Since uranium isn't mined at such cost because of > its sheen or its flavor, I figured this depleted aspect had to do with > something more or less nukeyoular. What a clever boy You are! Since it takes about 2.5 metric tons of Uranium to get just 1 kg weaponsgrade U235, thereīs a lot of U238 which goes abegging. Now, U238 has its place as tamper and booster material in thermo-nukes, but You can put only so much of it int the nuclear arsenal. For reactor grade uranium, the enrichment factor is lower, at the 10-20% level, which still gives You 250-500 kg of waste for each kg of usable material. And unlike the thermonukes, You donīt want too much U238 in the reactors. > When the alarums were sounded over > the thousands of rounds of depleted uranium shells expended in the Gulf > War, "poisoning the environment for 50,000 YEARS!," I had to wonder what > all the heartburn was about. I mean, it's DEPLETED, am I right? Make > me a bowling ball out of it and stand back of the foul line. Thatīs being downright stoopid. o A normal-sized bowling ball would have a weight of about 260 kg if it were made out of sold DU. o DU is a brittle, quite inelastic metal that does not have great tensile strength. You wouldnīt want it to break in the bowling alley on the first throw, if You were able to tote the 260 kg in the fist place. o Since DU is primarily an alpha-radiator, it wouldnīt do much on skin contact. However, were You to rub the surface, Youīd have a fair chance to ingest or inhale the material. Inside the body, alpha-radiation has a quality factor of 20, which makes is darn nasty. Call it guaranteed cancer. o DU is a neutron radiator, too. The weighted mean energy is about 3,6 MeV, which is quite uncuddly. Now, neutrons have a qualitiy factor of 5-10, i.e. for biological damage, the deposited energy should be doubled. Neutrons have a mean free path of about 6 cm in water, which is what Your body is, mostly. Neutrons lose energy via collisons with nuclei. The ones that they interact best (worst) with are hydrogen nuclei, i.e. protons, which they knock clean out of any molecular binding, and which create subequent damage on their own. The neutron flux is definitely not neglegible. o A DU round of a Warthog is typically encased in steel. However, when said round goes into and through the tank, said casing is very often breached. Now, the flamepoint of DU is about 800° C, which is easily reached in such a condition. Uranium fire is extremely difficult to put out. The result is a fine powder of Uranium oxide that precititates on all surfaces of the destroyed tank. Inhale it, ingest it or get it into wounds and You have a cancer in Your future. o Metallic Uranium is a heavy metal. As such it is more poisonous in the traditional sense than lead. Lead as metal is quite uncuddly. It didnīt occur to You to make a trivial web search on the subject at the time it was brought up, did it? Till "Wasting 4 years on 550 tons of DU" Poser