The Biden administration is expected to provide Ukraine with controversial depleted uranium ammunition for use with US-made Abrams tanks, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of enriched uranium and is extremely dense, making it a good material for penetrating armor. But depleted uranium is radioactive, and it’s been linked to cancer, birth defects, and environmental damage in areas it’s been used, including Iraq, where US forces frequently fired the toxic munitions and the impact is still being felt today.
According to the Journal report, there has been a debate within the White House over whether or not to provide Ukraine with depleted uranium rounds. Some officials have raised concerns about the criticism the US could face for providing weapons that might cause health and environmental damage.
The Pentagon has been pushing for the US to arm the Abrams tanks it sends to Ukraine with depleted uranium. The US is refurbishing old Abrams tanks that are expected to arrive in Ukraine by the fall.
US-made Bradley Fighting Vehicles can also be armed with depleted uranium, earning them the nickname “tank killer.” Earlier this year, the White House refused to say if it would provide Ukraine with Bradleys armed with the controversial ammunition.
The UK has sent depleted uranium rounds to Ukraine for use with the British-made Challenger 2 tanks. The British took the step despite Russian warnings that it would treat Ukraine’s use of the radioactive ammunition the same as a dirty bomb. Russian President Vladimir Putin said his decision to deploy nuclear weapons to Belarus was a response to the UK arming Ukraine with depleted uranium.
What a disgrace the US is.
After many years of preparation, US is about to start a full scale terrorist war against Russia. Nothing strange about that. When the military forces are not strong enough, the terrorist tactic is the only possible option for the rogue states.
Which tactics are “terrorist” in nature? Ukraine is conventionally, methodically rolling back Russian forces from their defensive lines. Although there may be questions about depleted uranium rounds (https://hir.harvard.edu/depleted-uranium-devastated-health-military-operations-and-environmental-injustice-in-the-middle-east/) no one is prepared to say it’s the cause of any issues. Also, those rounds won’t be deployed until the Abrams tanks arrive. So, chill out. Russia might be defeated by then and they won’t be needed.
Pro tip: Never, ever, ever use the expression “no one is prepared to say.” There’s always someone around who’ll tell you to hold his beer.
Agreed. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be concern about DU contamination. It’s just that there isn’t a CONSENSUS about the danger. (I should’ve chosen my words better.)
U are mistaken, there is no “CONSENSUS” that there is no danger of contamination. Maybe U should go to UKR. and offer your services.
U really believe that? LOL! Before Russia is defeated there will be 3 dozen USA, English and German, maybe even French industrial, population centers laid waste by Nukes. Maybe you think it was worth that….?
Sure there will.
“no one is prepared to say it’s the cause of any issues”
Other than the places it’s been used. Ask the Iraqis.
You’re a heartless POS.
Words hurt, you know. I’m not gonna be able to sleep tonight.
You’ve got to stop listening to Julio, you’re starting to sound just like him irrational one.
Disagreeing with someone does not make that person irrational.
Mention ONE irrational thing I have said here. ONE.
Too many to list, let’s just say you have had Russia getting wiped out and chased back across the border for months now. That about sums it up.
You are full of it.
The articles and comments are still here.
And you can also find them on my avatar if you click on it.
Find where i said that.
Do you find Doom Sternz, Critical Thinker, and/or Иван irrational?
I think YOU are the irrational one, Mr.
You opinions state your obvious disattachment from reality. I don’t need to go back and find your constant remarks about how Russia is being defeated on the battlefield. Even all the kings horses(weapons) sent to the battlefield have not defeated and chased Russia back across the Russian border. You are living in some kind of pipe dream when it comes to this war.
actually Julio your disqus account is private and no one can read your history of profundities
Maybe if UK and US provided enough depleted uranium, Ukraine will manufacture their first dirty bomb.
Are you completely uneducated on the subject?
Depleted uranium is uranium less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium! Ukraine is the 11 largest ‘producer’ of uranium.
https://www.mining-technology.com/data-insights/uranium-in-the-ukraine/
But according to you they would use depleted uranium, (i.e. uranium from which the more radioactive isotopes have been harvested for weapons or fuel), to create a dirty bomb, rather than the much more radioactive uranium they get from their mines every day.
Just a reminder to readers not to trust you to analyze any situation and arrive at any reasonable conclusions.
Get over yourself… Egomaniacal much ?
Well, Michael, thank you for that pointless rant. My analysis suggests that you are easily triggered, and second,, you have no sense of humor what so ever. Both, very important information.
No need to thank me, seeing as you did not learn anything (pointless) thus you either already knew and were merely being disingenuous or you do not know and are still poorly informed.
This if an attempt at humor “Maybe if UK and US provided enough depleted uranium, Ukraine will manufacture their first dirty bomb.” only proves how unfunny you are.
Humor? No. You are a dummy.
My Dad used to say, “beware of people with no sense of humor.” We can now change that to: beware of people with pointless rants and no sense of humor. (Sarcasm)
I’ve a great idea, Michael. Let’s use DU to fertilize farm fields in your nation. After a few years, y’all can get back to us and give us your “reasonable conclusions “.
The issue is that the DU is not being used as fertilizer but mostly (almost exclusively) as anti armor ammunition and in what is vanishingly small amounts if compared to fertilizer.
So if you took all the DU shells and spread the dust create by their use over an area like the Danish farm land you would not get a statistically significant change in uranium radiation form the Danish soil. Add to this that you would not be able to measure it after a couple of rainy seasons and you may be getting the picture.
Or to put in a different perspective if keeping the Russians from liberating parts of Denmark depended upon DU shells we would have no problems with this – Ukraine, Belarussian and a lot of other countries have had far worse pollution from the Chernobyl fallout – and that did not stop us eating crops from those lands for years and years.
It may feel nice to stir fear (it is part of the nuclear taboo) but in this case it is not justified – the DU is less radioactive than what occurs naturally it is going to be concentrated on battlefields (armored clash sites) it is going to be by weight concentrated in large bits and the dangerous dust is going to be washed away within one or two rainy seasons.
You seem to express the sentiment ‘put your money where your mouth is‘, for your information I’ve worked in Kosovo over a period of 3+ years, I never even gave not eating local produce a second thought and a lot of DU shells were used in Kosovo – just a few years before my first period working there.
Sarcasm isn’t your strong point, clearly.
If this was sarcasm you were still trying t make the point that I would myself not like to have DU spread across the agricultural lands of Denmark – otherwise you have to provide us with a /s at the end so as to know that what you have written actually reflects sarcasm.
So now chose, have you with your sarcasm acknowledged that you have accepted the point that DU is very far from as dangerous as you and others have here claimed, or were I correct to ignore the possibility that you were merely being sarcastic?
Michael, I swear you think in circles.
I was NOT being sarcastic in my assertion that DU is a dangerous substance. How on earth could it NOT BE ?
My sarcasm applied to my suggestion that your nation employ it as fertilizer. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
The point being that it is not as dangerous as natural uranium which is a naturally occurring element with an average concentration of 2.8 parts per million in the Earth’s crust. Traces of it occur almost everywhere. It is more abundant than gold, silver or mercury, about the same as tin and slightly less abundant than cobalt, lead or molybdenum.
Thus your sarcastic proposal that it be used as fertilizer is an ‘actual’ reality – as in it is just about every where – moreover even if the DU shells were all ground up to fine dust (only a fraction of them actually is) and spread across Ukraine (or Denmark) they would not significantly change the radioactivity of the ground.
If it’s natural and organic, why not his backyard? (Sarcasm)
You have completely betrayed your avatar name.
Change it to AnAL- Yzer
No.
Any bets on when the U.S. will send Ukraine tactical nuclear weapons?
The chances of that are rising. Some evil, stupid and twisted minds are working on it as we speak: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/can-biden-deter-a-russia-nuclear-attack-on-ukraine-yes-if-he-gives-ukraine-tactical-nukes/
What makes you think it hasn’t already?
Yes they will.send and use tactical Nukes as soon as Ukraine starts to.lose biggly.
Yes, Russia will use Nukes as soon as Ukraine kicks its ass out of Ukraine.
It starts with tanks and.then F16s and so on They push Putin into a.corner which.is why I.call.him Sleepy,Stupid Joe.These clowns think they will survive Nuclear war which is insane.It is better to cooperate then.get incinerated.
Any bets on when Russia will send Belarus tactical nuclear weapons?
they already did Julio =
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/belarus-russia-nuclear-weapons-war-lukashenko-putin-hiroshima-nagasaki/
In my tool box I have a half-broken socket wrench driver. The ratchet for unscrewing nuts is busted but the forward-driving ratchet still works.
Every step the US takes to escalate this war reminds me of that tool. They don’t seem to have a working down-escalator.
Like they say, War is a Ratchet. And it’s driving us nuts.
“Like they say, War is a Ratchet. And it’s driving us nuts…” —The die is cast! Love it! You set it up perfectly, CD. (Sarcasm)
“….debate…. raised concerns about the criticism the US could face for providing weapons that might cause health and environmental damage.” But of course, we will still provide those weapons while we drip moral superiority out of our exceptional a$$. Twice we bombed Japanese cities with nuclear weapons to save lives. One of those two cities had 50 thousand catholic Japanese. We did so much good nuking it, they turned Nagasaki into a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (Sarcasm alert)
https://www.tsunagujapan.com/nagasaki-the-catholic-rome-of-japan/
“savage indignation”
“US Set to Provide Ukraine With Depleted Uranium Rounds for Abrams Tanks – The toxic ammunition is linked to cancer and birth defects”
America will pollute the most fertile farm land in the world with poisonous plutonium. Once it hits a target it turns into poisonous dust.
No way we’re that evil… I think the plan is to turn the ethnic Russians living in eastern Ukraine into spider-men and women. You know… from the radiation…? (Sarcasm alert)
“… does whatever a spider can …”
Uranium is not plutonium. Which doesn’t mean that depleted uranium isn’t poisonous, of course.
“By Fall”?????
Another Winter of “just wait till Spring”?
Does that mean no one expects this offensive to work and we are expecting a repeat that will need these shells and THAT one will work to push Russia out next time?
Is this just pie in the sky musing about “what ifs” about a fighting season in 2024 that is just in someone’s imagination?
Either Ukraine makes some real gains and pushes Russia out of Ukraine and Crimea today or they better start talking.
Germany has just announced they do not have the capacity to replace their tanks as they lose them. They said it in diplospeak butthe cracks in the coalition is beginning and if this offensive does not work, only governments run by the senile will be the only ones supplying them soon along with the Brits.
I’m reminded of a time when organized crime was heavily involved in dumping toxic waste.
Toxic waste is a dirty job. But somebody has to do it. Why not wrap it up in the American flag and dump it in other countries in the name of “defense”?
The facade is off, the USA is truly the evil empire and moving on to outright Tyranny. Your citizenship has been trashed!
Soon they will come for all your guns, then U will be no better than the J#ws in Germany and the Warsaw Ghetto. 🙁 Fight the power!
When the United Snakes sends its nuclear waste to combat Russia, my question is this: how will Putin react?
Because most of U234 and U235 were removed, depleted uranium is nearly 100% radioactive U238. It emits a helium ion at 4.3 million volt. U2328 has a half life of 4.5 billion years. Yes, it is a danger to health. Uranium is also a potent chemical poison.
You almost could not be more wrong, even if you tried:
https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/emergencies/isotopes/uranium.htm
Hence depleted uranium is exactly what it sounds like less radioactive than the natural stuff. Depleted uranium is a by product of enriching uranium for use in nuclear reactors or weapons.
There is naturally uranium in Ukraine – and
https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-fuel-facts-uranium
https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/uranium/where_found.html
We all know that government has no credibility, it is a lying machine united with the lying official corporate media, electronic and in print.
Kosovo, Fallujah, and other places birth defects, deformed babies and contaminated soil tell another story. The use of depleted Uranium ammunition’s makes us the accomplices to war crimes.
Remember about the drone ratio of collateral victims? They did not tell us 1 victim to 10 collateral victims?
Politicians are trained liars, ask Pompeo and Biden.
/www.dw.com/en/uranium-risks-haunt-kosovo-survivors/a-16366645#
Governments may have tattered credibility, but hopefully you can understand the process of enriching uranium for nuclear reactors or weapons!? This is stuff you can look up in any physics book have the evil state also infested them?
The problem is mainly in Iraq, because they have little or no rainfall – which would otherwise wash the small but heavy particles deep into the ground.
The view from Kosovo where NATO expended about 30,000 rounds of depleted uranium shells:
https://www.dw.com/en/uranium-risks-haunt-kosovo-survivors/a-16366645
This is not to claim that there is no risk at all, but to make it clear that the risk is so low as to make assessment of the actual effects very difficult – i.e. this is not the kind of pollution that makes the area a no-go zone – the risk from all the unexploded ordinance is far higher as is the risk from many of the other very toxic pollutants that you will find on a modern battlefield.
In places were depleted Uranium weapons were used there are more babies born with birth defects, increased cancer including increased leukemia and contaminated soil. Science research confirms that with no evidence supporting the opposite. It would be so nice if one could use contaminated waste without long time consequences.
Not in Kosovo – that is your problem – in places where the US has invaded and polluted the areas as they often do there may be such problems, but in Kosovo there are not an appreciable increase – not enough that they think they can say that this is a stronger effect than the Chernobyl accident and that was 13 years before the Kosovo war – or did you not read the link I posted earlier?
the difference between DU munitions and naturally occurring uranium is that when a DU shell explodes it spreads radioactive dust around that people inhale.
so how does one become poisoned by natural uranium? i guess one would have to dig up a deposit of it and maybe roll around in it before dissolving it in water and then drinking it while taking a bath in it.
“”DU is a byproduct of the Uranium (U) enrichment process where the ratio of natural U isotopes from the earth’s crust is ‘enriched’ with higher energy U isotopes to produce U suitable for use in nuclear reactors. The U remaining is “depleted” of about 40 percent of its radioactivity, but retains the same chemical toxicity as natural uranium.””
https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/depleted_uranium/
DU also ignites when exposed to oxygen. so not only do people inhale radioactive dust, but they inhale radioactive smoke as well.
Yes and it is that dust that the rain washes away during the first one or two rainy seasons in countries like Kosovo or Ukraine, but not Iraq as it hardly rains.
You do not have to dig up a deposit it happens to be pretty much everywhere in the ground – if it was as dangerous as many here makes it out to be we would suffer a great deal more health issues than we do. There are uranium deposits too, but like iron but at a much smaller scale uranium is all around you in many places (like e.e. Ukraine).
The fact that these dust particles are very heavy compared to size is what gets them washed inti the ground faster than other particles.
Exactly so 40% less radioactive than already fairly harmless uranium – that does not make it healthy – it just makes it harmless when compared with the stuff released from e.g. Chernobyl.
Yes the powder ignite when exposed to oxygen, which again lowers the ability of DU shells to cause lasting effects – the concentration of small and unhealthy particles is lowered.
The escalation continues, cluster bombs, land mines, depleted uranium rounds and the clown Zelensky wants nuclear weapons and no end in sight. USA/NATO war criminals are running the show. Look at our sorry deranged president and the advisors he picked.
We don’t have a man like a young and wise JFK sitting in the oval office, we have a demented old man instead. JFK did have life experience, he did serve in the uniform of the USA.
Prof. Sachs, who has the courage to speak about peace, he reminded the nation on one of the last speeches the young president made before he was assassinated. He did compromise with Russia avoiding possible nuclear war. He handled the Cuba missile crises superbly, a real statesman.
REFUSAL to negotiate and compromise is Biden’s position. Compare Biden with JFK.
For my part I would hope there will be a petition to nominate Prof. Sachs for the Nobel Peace Prize.
He deserves it and it would help to repair the credibility of the Nobel Price committee.
I agree with your comments regarding Vlad the Lesser, Biden, escalation, etc., but I would like to clarify that JFK’s administration installed nuclear ballistic missiles first in Turkey in 1961. Right on the U.S.S.R.’s doorstep. In addition, they were plotting and staging for an overthrow of Cuba at the same time.
The missile crisis of ‘63 was defused by both the US pulling the nukes out of Turkey and Khrushchev out of Cuba.
Of course, the US pullout from Turkey was under the condition that it wasn’t to be publicized and that made JFK the good guy, while Khrushchev was the villainous commie who had no business staging a nuclear arsenal on Cuba.
The nerve of him doing the same thing to the US after they did it to him in ‘61. 😉
I would hardly consider JFK a statesman in this particular situation.
The fact remains, both sides used their brains and pulled back. Interestingly the US compromise had to be kept secret lest it would have made Kennedy and the USA look weak in the eyes of the public, not smart, no weak.
The American public was not able to deal with simple reality, commo sense politics?
In your opinion Vlad the Lesser and Biden? the Deranged?
As long as the public buys and votes for stupidity it will continue.
It is a goal. The most fertile land on earth to be poisoned. Reduce Slavic population, or Arab. Depleted uranium rusts. Radiation is the least of peoblems. Dust spreads through air, wind and rain, gets in water and soil and humans and animals consume nuclear particles in mear, milk, vegetables or grains, drink poluted water. bresthe poluted air. The lie that depleted uranium is not dangerous is a transparent, vicious lie.
The Pentagon says residue from DU rounds are safe. Let’s see what the US govt. EPA says.
Avoid facilities that use or process DU: DU is dangerous when it is inside your body.
Avoid internal exposure: If DU gets inside the body the hazards increase. Minimize your risk of internal exposure by limiting your proximity to uranium manufacturing plants and firing ranges that continue to use DU in ammunition.
https://www.epa.gov/radtown/depleted-uranium
Putin was quoted as saying they can respond in kind, and that they have “hundreds of thousands” of their own. I’ve heard (unconfirmed) reports that they were already using them, probably in their T-90’s and maybe in upgraded T-70’s and T-80’s??
It’s well known that they do have them and have trained with them.
I’ve also heard the Russians have held back from using them because the primary danger is to the crews who recover the damaged equipment. If either side uses them, both sides will at various times have crews being effected, (sometimes you recover your equipment sometime you recover theirs).
It’s also possible Putin has been holding back on using them for propaganda reasons. If it became well known that they were using them the press would nail them on it and their own people might not want to take the chance. Although to be 100% honest, in a war like this, I’d take my chance on the tiny bit of radiation and give my gunners the best chance of making a kill. If this was a war with Gulf War level US casualties then no, why risk it, but when you are talking about hundreds of thousands of casualties, the odds of some people who handle the damaged equipment being hurt years later just doesn’t factor in that much, or it shouldn’t anyway. (not if you understand risk assessment at all)
My personal theory is that Putin and his generals are making sure to keep enough in reserve, just in case there is a full scale war with NATO, that goes for pretty much all their equipment. Ukraine of course can fight with everything they have, Russia doesn’t quite dare to do that, that would leave them exposed in a way that would absolutely guarantee that nukes would be the only way they would be able to defend themselves and well, that’s pretty much the end of everyone at that point.
US/NATO has major problems. An insurgency against NATO is developing in Latvia with a Finish NATO fuel tanker burnt in the town of Salaspils.
The longer this illegal aggressive war (supreme international crime) against Russia goes on the more the unrest will spread. No one is safe while NATO and those who control them exist. This is an existential class war for us all.