ABC got it wrong.
Depleted Uranium is Lethal
Dear Editor,
Last evening Peter Jennings introduced an update on the depleted uranium
smuggling story with the assertion that "depeleted uranium is harmless."
This claim is totally false. Indeed, depleted uranium is what someone
would use if he was making a "dirty bomb." That's because the fallout from
such a weapon not only spreads but is likely to be inhaled and ingested by
people who are far away and to make them deathly ill much later.
The question that wasn't asked in the story, but should have been, is where
the depleted uranium might be coming from. The answer would have to be
that one place where there's thousands of tons of the stuff is on the
ground in Iraq, not just in shards from exploded bombs but in ordnance
that, for one reason or another, ended up being a dud.
While most people are aware that there's a problem with storing nuclear
fuels after they've done their duty making electricity, most of us are
unaware that 98% of all uranium that is mined and separated from the rock
in which it is found ends up sitting somewhere as a hazardous waste that
nobody has yet figured out what to do with.
No, that's not quite correct. The Department of Energy has been giving it
to arms manufacturers for free so they can mix it in with the other metals
that make up our bullets and bombs. And then, in that form, we ship it off
to distant lands like Afghanistan and Iraq, where it can contaminate the
air, water and soil that all living things depend on.
And then some of our soldier bring it back in their urine and other bodily
fluids.