The White House refused to say if it will provide Ukraine with Bradley Fighting Vehicles equipped with radioactive depleted uranium rounds, ammunition that is linked to cancer and birth defects.
Depleted uranium is typically created as a byproduct of producing enriched uranium and is extremely dense, making it an effective material to pierce the armor of tanks. Bradleys can be equipped with depleted uranium ammunition, which is why they are known as “tank killers.”
When asked on Wednesday if the Bradleys the US is sending to Ukraine will be equipped with depleted uranium, a senior Biden administration official said, “I’m not going to get into the technical specifics.” The official also declined to answer if the M1 Abrams tanks the US is providing Kyiv will be equipped with a depleted uranium cage.
Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of Russia’s delegation in Vienna on arms control, has warned Moscow would view the use of depleted uranium weapons in Ukraine as the use of a “dirty bomb.” Gavrilov claimed that Germany’s Leopard 2 tanks could also be equipped with depleted uranium rounds.
“In case such munitions for NATO-made heavy weapons are supplied to Kiev, we will consider that as the use of dirty nuclear bombs against Russia with all the consequences that come with it,” he said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.
Cancer and birth defects spiked in Iraq after the Gulf War, during which the US fired an estimated one million depleted uranium rounds. The US also used toxic ammunition in its 2003 invasion, and studies have found that birth defects are more common in areas where depleted uranium was used. Birth defects are still common today in the city of Fallujah.
Of course they will get it. Biden wants the big war with Russia and he and his neocon war criminals never have to face the consequences of their insane policy.
Jesus, which twisted bastard from the MIC designed these weapons using nuclear waste? Designed to cause cancer and make your kids have cancer forever? And why on Earth are we handing it over to Ukraine? So we can maim a generation of Russian kids with birth defects just so corrupt Nazi pal Zelensky can rule the Donbass?
It becomes a war crime when the others do it.
It ceases to be a war crime when it’s used on brown people like in Iraq and Syria.
And more, like Vietnam, Palestine, Afghanistan, and others.
It`s the MIC scientists who come up with the ideas then sell them to the US Military , after the first Atomic Bomb , the Nuke scientist kept coming up with ever more destructive Nukes , basically keeping them selves in work , they could careless how many men women and children were killed by them.
Well just calm down. These are going to be used on Ukrainian soil and any cancers down the road will be caught by Ukrainians. In the mean time they will kill Russians most directly.
What would I do if I were an extra-solar illegal alien looking to expand living space in the vast Eurasian continent protected all these years by the noble Russian national experiment?
Simple. I would hire cowardly Nazis who work at the Pentagon and Nato to lob radioactive cannon shot onto Europe’s best farm land.
That would do it.
“…Fighting Vehicles equipped with radioactive depleted uranium rounds, ammunition that is linked to cancer and birth defects.” Kill Russians, then cause cancer and birth defects in their children sounds like a wet dream for neocons/neolibs. I would be surprised not if they do it, but if they didn’t do it already. WWIII is here and soon we will all die in a nuclear war. But look at the bright side. That will end childhood cancer and birth defects because all our children and grand children will be dead. (Sarcasm alert)
Even in case, Russia and NATO use all their nuclear arsenals against each other, it doesn’t necessary mean the end of the humankind. China is prepared well for such scenario. Most Chinese people will die of course, but still a million or so have a good chance to survive in their well equipped bunkers. After a couple of years, it would be safe enough to get out from the bunkers.
Actually, nuclear war between the US and Russia will pretty much wipe out the human species, primarily by famine and its associated ailments:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0
The initial war, which would last an hour or two, might ‘only’ kill 500 million (my own estimate, including US, Europe, and Russia). These authors estimate 5 billion deaths (+/-) from the long-term nuclear winter effects. China will not be spared, and the few regions in the southern hemisphere that are somewhat less affected will not be able to support billions of refugees who are hungry and desperate.
And it will leave behind a world, emerging from the ultimate aerosol effect, still warming and with no ozone layer. Tough times for any real chance at survival.
I think Chinese people will adapt to this awful situation.
From the viewpoint of humankind, what really does matter is the continuation of human evolution.
If only 0.1% percent survive, it is also good enough. In one thousand years, if everything is good, we will have billions of people again. And we can live comfortably on the same planet a couple of billions of years more.
The humans living now are already driving an extinction event on the scale of previous catastrophic events like the Cretaceous-Tertiary (~60 million years ago) which extinguished the large dinosaurs (and opened the way for mammals). We are doing that by habitat destruction and global warming, on top of hunting and fishing them to death.
If the humans ignite a thermonuclear catastrophe, I would rather seem them go extinct than continue to infest this otherwise glorious planet, with the near certainty that they would wreck it all over again, given the opportunity.
We’ve had our chance. We are clever but we are not wise. Trade in the hands with opposable thumbs for flippers and let us dwell in the ocean like seals or cetaceans, and we wouldn’t cause much trouble. But we’re too dangerous to be given a second chance on land.
The nuclear war is bad but building well protected and well equipped bunkers where people can stay many years, is good. It gives a chance to the humankind to carry on after a big catastrophe anyway, even if the catastrophe will be caused by some extraterrestrial force.
It is unfair to blame all the humankind for the approaching WW III. Some people and some countries are struggling not to allow it to happen. China is one of them. Why should we wish the death to all Chinese? Americans started the war, so they are guilty, not Chinese people.
That would be nice if even possible. The people would lose their minds before they could get out.
Why they should lose their minds? It is not so difficult to organize a comfortable life deep inside earth.
For how long, days or years?
Years, of course. Many years. By the way, there are no problem to get out to the surface immediately after the war is over. One needs only to be properly protected against radiation.
They used to tell school children in case of war to hide under their desks to be safe, or something like that.
I tend to believe as one Russian head of state said: “the living will envy the dead” the day after.
The current crop of leaders in NATO are just too sick to think, starting with a senile president, they are total idiots.
Or possibly the truth, NA.
If there are studies of the long term effects the public is not being told. I can’t believe there are no studies after the Gulf war.
They know who sabotaged the pipelines and refuse to tell who did it.
You mean they refuse to confess.
To know some details would be nice. What did Scholz know and when did he know and what do the Swedes have to hide?
What Putin can do if Americans use dirty nukes against Russia? Hardly it can be considered as a nuclear attack. The reasonable response could be a destruction of NATO logistics in Poland. Maximum what Putin can do, is a tactical nuclear strike against the concentration of NATO troops in Poland and Germany. Maybe, that is exactly what American strategists are wishing to provoke. Central Europe get in a big trouble, US is fine and all the world is outraged. Maybe, many countries which are refusing to participate in the economic war against Russia now, will change their mind.
If the Russians respond to what is a very limited radiation containment issue by a nuclear attack then most likely very much of the world will respond – that is if they get the chance – I do not see the Russians nuking any NATO country as the respond will be so swift that the threat of an all out nuclear war will be very likely.
Starting an all out nuclear war because a 2 possibly 3 man tank crew may suffer long term consequences of being exposed to radiation – that is if they manage to survive the very significant event of the kinetic energy being released – seems a tad excessive, would you not say?
If you believe that depleted uranium is as benign as you appear to, you’re one sick puppy.
The office I worked in was across the street from a Costco. Occasionally, I would do lunch there, do some shopping In the days when there were plenty of books on sale there, I would read one that piqued my interest, over a couple of days. One, the title of which evades me. was on the subject of our use of DU shells in Iraq war one. It was horrifying! The consequences. The pictures of Iraqi children with cancer. My G-d in Heaven! I didn’t purchase the book. I did not want a nightmare on my bookshelf.
Yes, V, that we did.
And the Zionazis have used it against Gaza as well.
I believe that depleted uranium is as the name implies less dangerous than naturally occurring uranium as it contains less of the more radioactive uranium 235 isotope. Uranium appears a fair number of places and even the non depleted stuff will not kill you if you do not keep it with you.
Perhaps reading up on the stuff would put your mind at ease?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_ore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium
To put it in other words you could very likely have passed by more dangerous amounts of Uranium of the more dangerous non depleted type many times while walking in nature – being exposed to the stuff when shot by it is clearly much more dangerous – but it does not have the dirty bomb quality.
Yes, “depleted uranium” is less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium.
But in the normal course of things, naturally occurring uranium isn’t essentially aerosolized into small, breathable particles by being fired at high speeds out of powerful weapons and into hard objects in human-inhabited environments.
The science so far seems somewhat inconclusive as to whether that’s actually resulting in e.g. increased cancer rates in areas where it happens, but it’s not implausible.
Sure the aerosolization is problematic – and no doubt it is not a high on the wish list for my backyard – but if you live in Ukraine where they had the Chernobyl contamination – I can tell you that depleted Uranium dust is going to be the smaller of the dangers to human health after this war.
Unexploded ordinance – chemical contamination from the many shot up machines and different types of explosives are all likely to cost far more years of lost life, than dust which if very radioactive has a low half life.
And it’s a toxic heavy metal. The “lower” radiation and “depleted” tag is just marketing so we can use our cancer rounds on the people we are (always) freeing from dastardly authoritarians.
It’s about the same, U235 is only .72% of natural uranium.
Also, how is natural uranium not a concern? It’s not a normal part of your environment. That’s like saying “normal” mercury is nothing to worry about in your garden.
I guess whether it constitutes a dirty bomb is down to whether it’s your kids and family getting killed by it.
Depleted uranium is about 60% less radioactive than natural uranium:
https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_layman/depleted-uranium/en/l-2/4.htm
Natural uranium occurs at 4 ppm – so actually fairly common – CO2 which is a very common gas is at 420 ppm – so yes natural uranium is a fairly common element – as it has a fairly high half life it is however not very dangerous. So much much less dangerous than mercury or cadmium – as in you can handle it by hand and you do not have to wash your hands or be decontaminated afterwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium
Not the ideal stuff to make a dirty bomb.
it isn’t just the tank crews that suffer the effects of deplete uranium munitions. the depleted uranium becomes a very fine dust which blows around the countryside and contaminates the environment and everyone in it.
As pointed out it is less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium – the dust is thus not as such dangerous compared with what you face on other old battlefields – unexploded ordinance will cause much more damage.
It’s also a heavy metal. This is like sowing slightly radioactive cadmium into the soil. It also burns aggressively, so it is not solid chunks but toxic, radioactive ash. It is definitely bad news.
Again – notice that this is less radioactive than the fairly commonly found natural uranium – it only burns under very extreme conditions and the ash is again less radioactive than that of natural uranium.
Yes this is not a healthy product – but it is also once the battle is over not going to be very dangerous for many years – one year perhaps, but certainly not longer. You face more danger form the left over radiation from Chernobyl than from depleted uranium.
You must have a whole houseful of “natural” uranium? >3ppm in normal soil, including Ukraine, so this is a rather large addition to the heavy metals in their soil.
And of course your entire argument simply ignores all the epidemiology from places like Iraq. It does serious harm, and we KNOW it does.
It’s an element, it will be in the soil forever. It will be sickening and killing people, CHILDREN, forever. It’s easy to call covering a country in toxic ash “no big deal” when you live 10,000 miles away.
Anyway, nuclear bombs are way less dangerous than the surface of the sun, and we see that everyday, right?
The amount of pollution caused and left by the US army in Iraq is very substantial – the amount of rainfall in Iraq is very insubstantial – so plenty of sources for any effects in Iraq and a higher likelihood that some depleted uranium dust would be left in some of the wrecks left behind.
There is a higher danger from radon gas leaking from the ground than there would be from depleted uranium – not that I would recommend living with either – just trying to get peoples perspective back in proportion. Hence yes if you go through the battlefield an insubstantial amount of time (measured by rainfall) after the fight – you expose yourself to a higher risk – but the amount of costs associated with this would still be dominated by the cost caused by unexploded ordinance.
Not how radioactivity works – either it is there forever and then hardly radioactive at all (depleted uranium is a bit like this) – or it is fairly radioactive and it then has a not very high half life, and will not be there forever.
Again not how this works, and I’m not living very far away from Ukraine – the pollution from Chernobyl was orders of magnitude worse and we lived with fallout from that event – which were significantly worse both in extend of time and radioactivity than depleted uranium is or will be.
Depleted uranium is created by removing a very substantial amount of the more radioactive U235 isotope from natural uranium. So depleted uranium is significantly less dangerous than natural uranium – as pointed out the worst part of this is that it is vaporized when penetrating e.g. a tank and even vey low radiation isotopes are very unhealthy to inhale – thus while the ‘dust’ is present it is very unhealthy to breathe or swallow.
Rain will however in a fairly short amount of time flush the stuff deeper into the soil and thus the danger of ingestion.
Rationalize, rationalize, rationalize is all you seem capable of. Your posts aren’t worth the time it takes to read them.
So I won’t.
Well good of you to admit that being rational about stuff is of no interest to you.
I wasn’t implying that you do it in a GOOD way.
Well the first Russian tank taken out with a Nuke shell Russia will respond in kind .
Do they have depleted uranium ammunition?
since the late ’70s
Every nuclear warhead built produces around 500+ lbs of DU as a byproduct. Anyone building bombs has this stuff lying around.
it is ukrainians who would bear the brunt of such weaponry fired by their own militia
So it goes.
So that would be a YES.
“White House Refuses to Say If Ukraine Will Get Toxic Depleted Uranium Ammo”
White House spokesman: ‘Whether discharged Russian soldiers will get cancer, have children with birth defects, is classified information’
Russia isn’t worried about its troops. That’s well known and if they pull out their troops today, that and many other concerns will no longer be an issue.
“Russia isn’t worried about its troops. Tha-”
Dear Mister Don Julio Senor Sir Master,
I am a Ukrainian mother only a little sick with radiation and me and my one-arm birth defect child need a country and work causa the radiation and we hear you will give a place to Ukrainian girls to sleep and bread to eat if they pick your coffee all day.
Because you care about Ukrainians, don’t you, Mister Don Sir? That is why you will help us now. Right, Mr. Don Sir?
So please have pity on us we are sorry we lost but we killed lots of russians so that is good for america yes mister don sir?
Just please don’t punish my little one if he cannot pick enough of your coffee cause he has one arm from the radiation shells america nicely sent ukraine.
Blah blah blah
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/america-russian-tanks-are-now-shooting-depleted-uranium-bullets-175219
Russia has armed its tanks with controversial depleted uranium shells iand has probably already used them in Ukraine to include other illegal/controversial ammunitions such as cluster bombs and Thermobaric weapons.
Russian depleted uranium is special and doesn’t have the same negative effects as US depleted uranium because Russia is good and the US is bad.
Great point. I stand corrected.
You’re in it to the neck…!
Every night we scan the skies searching for evidence of that great big old asteroid. I think it would be a lot more effective in clearing out the detritus than the second coming or the like.
In the meantime, when we see the mushroom cloud rising over the Bay Area, we’ll know it’s time for the ultimate tan.
Wish I could say something positive, but as long as America and Western Europe are run by certifiable mental cases, we’re all screwed. If it comes before I die a “natural” death, I’ll be able to say I outlasted western civilization. Now that would be something to die for!
If puppet Zelenski go along with depleted uranium weapons/missiles, than Russia has the right to use tactical nukes weapons/missiles.
“Cancer and birth defects spiked in Iraq after the Gulf War, during which the US fired an estimated one million depleted uranium rounds. The US also used toxic ammunition in its 2003 invasion, and studies have found that birth defects are more common in areas where depleted uranium was used. Birth defects are still common today in the city of Fallujah.”
War crimes, equal to anything Hitler did.
The basic problem is both sides know they cannot wage a shooting war with each other due to the obvious. So Russia learned its lesson in Syria, they played by the rules, they were invited by the legal government to help fight ISIS and others who were trying to overthrow that same government. What did the US do ? Jumped in illegally and grabbed a whole section of the country which included all the oil. So that’s where we are today, the way forward has been established by the US, jump right in grab what you want and let the chips fall. And still Russia wants to play by the rules but the US continues to play down and dirty, stacking the deck against peace.
The accident at Chernobyl was not good enough for NATO so it is sending depleted uranium to cause birth defects in Ukraine. The US & UK also caused environmental damage to Iraq by bombing the hell out of the country. The US fired depleted uranium at Iraq but said “Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against his own people”.
What if the US does the same thing to Syria and it infects its bordering countries including Israel?
The special qualities of US armor and ammo require the density and flamability of depleted uranium for ammo, and its density and physical interaction with a ceramic matrix in armor. Without that, the old steel armor and ammo is 1960’s vintage, and we may as well be sending M-60 tanks (which we still do export to some countries).
Maybe it could be and should be done without the toxic and radioactive qualities of depleted uranium, but the current fact is that the US only has this option for top quality armor or ammo — it never developed other options, it went with this.
So what do we send to Ukraine, toxic radioactive stuff, or third-rate stuff dating from the 60’s?
Neither is really a good choice, which situation reflects longstanding decisions in the US to use depleted uranium as its go-to option for its own forces.
Note that if and when one of our tanks has its depleted uranium armor penetrated, the vehicle is toxic, the crew must be treated for the toxicity and radiation exposure, and special crews must be sent to recover and clean up or dispose of the vehicle. Likewise, any vehicle penetrated by our toxic radioactive ammo is unsafe, and requires specially trained engineers to deal with it.
Hey, maybe this will motivate scientists to come up with a cure to cancer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Modern_thermobaric_weapons_of_Russia
A list of Russia’s thermobaric weapons. I had no idea it was given that much tactical importance.
I’ve no doubt the items sent will contain depleted uranium. The Russian should expect it without proving so.
Of course, “humanitarian concerns” are always uppermost in the plans of the USA to help its allies.
Toxic? Radioactive. Any shells ending in soul will rust, dust will spread radioactibmve particle affecting water, soul and air. Unknown health conseqymuences. But mortality in Iraq and Kosovo shows outcomes. Just nobody. CARES!
White House Confirms Ukraine Will Get Toxic Depleted Uranium Ammo