Britain, U.S. Using Radioactive â??Dirty Bombsâ??

[align=left]Britain, U.S. Using Radioactive â??Dirty Bombsâ??[/align]
Dr. Doug Rokke | July 24 2006

While U.S. and British military personnel continue using illegal uranium munitionsâ??Americaâ??s and Englandâ??s own â??dirty bombsâ?�â??Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Defense (DOD) officials deny that there are any adverse health and environmental effects as a consequence of the manufacture, testing and use of uranium munitions. The reason for the doubletalk is obviously to avoid criminal liability for the willful and illegal dispersal of a radioactive and toxic materialâ??depleted uranium (DU).

How do I know this? Fourteen years ago, I was asked by the U.S. military to clean up the initial DU mess from Gulf War I.

Following that, I headed the Depleted Uranium Project for the DOD, which created a series of manuals and training videos to teach soldiers about the hazards associated with handling DU munitions.

Still, DOD officials and others attempt to justify uranium munitions use while ignoring mandatory requirements that are already in place to deal with the contamination.

I am dismayed that DOD and DOE officials and their representatives continue personal attacks aimed to silence or discredit those of us who are demanding that medical care be provided to all DU casualties and that environmental remediation be completed in compliance with government regulations.

The Pentagon arrogantly refuses to comply with its own orders and directives that require the DOD to provide prompt and effective medical care to all exposed individuals, as cited in military reports.

They also refuse to clean up dispersed radioactive contamination as required by Army Regulation AR 700-48, titled Management of Equipment Contaminated With Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities, and U.S. Army Technical Bulletin TB 9-1300-278, which notes the â??Guidelines For Safe Response To Handling, Storage, And Transportation Accidents
Involving Army Tank Munitions Or Armor Which Contain Depleted Uranium.â?�

Specifically, section 2-4 of Army Regulation AR 700-48, dated Sept. 16, 2002, requires that:

â?¢ â??Military personnel â??identify, segregate, isolate, secure, and label all RCEâ?� (radiologically contaminated equipment).

â?¢ â??Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will be implemented as soon as possible.â?�

â?¢ â??Radioactive material and waste will not be locally disposed of through burial, submersion, incineration, destruction in place, or abandonmentâ?�; and

â?¢ â??All equipment, to include captured or combat RCE, will be surveyed, packaged, retrograded, decontaminated and released. . . .â?�

In addition, medical care must be provided by DOD to all individuals affected by the manufacturing, testing and use of uranium munitions. A thorough environmental cleanup must also be completed without further delay.
The use of uranium weapons, the release of radioactive components in destroyed U.S. and foreign military equipment and releases of industrial, medical and research facility radioactive materials have resulted in unacceptable exposures.

Therefore, decontamination must be completed, as required by Army regulation, and should include releases of all radioactive materials resulting from military operations.

Americans should realize that adverse health and environmental effects of uranium weapons contamination are not limited solely to combat zones. Any facility and site where uranium weapons have been manufactured or tested should be checked, also. These include Vieques, Puerto Rico; Colonie, N.Y.; Concord, Mass.; Jefferson Proving Grounds in Indiana; and the Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.

The willful dispersal of tons of solid radioactive and chemically toxic waste in the form of uranium munitions is illegal. Beyond that, it does not even pass the common sense test.

Even the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notes that DU is a dirty bomb. DHS issued â??dirty bombâ?� response guidelines on Jan. 3, 2006, for incidents within the United States.

They specifically state: â??A radiological incident is defined as an event or series of events, deliberate or accidental, leading to the release, or potential release, into the environment of radioactive material in sufficient quantity to warrant consideration of protective actions.â?�

The first step in putting this terrible situation right should be for Bush and Blair to set up medical care for all casualties.

They should then demand a thorough environmental assessment of the level of DU contamination around testing facilities, munitions plants and battlegrounds. They should also call for an immediate cessation of retaliation against all of us who demand compliance with medical care provisions. And, finally, the two leaders should order an immediate stop to the already illegal use of DU munitions.

Doug Rokke, Ph.D. (ret.) is a veteran of the first Gulf War and is the former director of the U.S. Armyâ??s Depleted Uranium Project, which developed a series of training videos and manuals about DU munitions for the military. The materials were intended to teach servicemen and women about the use of and hazards associated with DU munitions. However, the military never instituted the program. Today, Dr. Rokke has become one of the leading critics of the U.S. governmentâ??s continued use of DU.

That was easy.............



Kinetic energy penetrator
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French anti-tank round with its sabot
APFSDS at point of separation of sabot.A kinetic energy penetrator (also known as a KE weapon) is a type of ammunition which, like a bullet, does not contain explosives, and uses kinetic energy to penetrate the target.

The term can apply to any type of armour piercing shot but is commonly used for the most common modern type of armour piercing weapon, the armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS), a type of long-rod penetrator (LRP) and not for small arms bullets.

The opposite "technique" to KE-penetrators are chemical energy penetrators. There are two of these shells in use: High explosive anti-tank (HEAT) and High explosive squash head (HESH). They have been widely used against armour in the past and still have a role but are less effective against modern composite armour such as Chobham as used on main battle tanks of today.

The principle of the kinetic energy penetrator is that it uses its kinetic energy, which is a function of mass and velocity, to force its way through armour. The modern KE weapon maximises KE by

being fired with a very high muzzle velocity; they trade mass for velocity as the kinetic energy increases with the square of the velocity of the projectile.
concentrating the force in a small impact area while still retaining a large mass
This has led to the current designs which resemble a long metal arrow.

[edit]
History
The develpoment of the KE penetrator is that of two elements of artillery design. Firstly the highest speed of shot and secondly the concentration of the force. The first can be achieved by having a low mass and large base area in the gun barrel. This can be done by firing a small size projectile wrapped in a lightweight outer shell from a larger gun. Once the shell was clear of the barrel the sabot was no longer needed and would fall off in pieces, leaving the shell travelling at high speed and with a smaller cross-sectional area, which reduces aerodynamic drag during the flight to the target (see also external ballistics and terminal ballistics). The Germans developed sabots under the name "Treibspiegel" ("Propulsion mirror") to give extra altitude to their anti-aircraft guns during the Second World War.

The concentration of the force into a smaller area was approached by replacing the single metal (usually steel) shot with a composite one using two metals. A heavy core (based on tungsten) inside a lighter metal outer. These designs were known as "Armour Piercing Composite Rigid" (APCR). On impact the core had a much more concentrated effect than plain metal shot of the same weight and size. However the air resistance and other effects were the same as for the shell of identical size.

The British between 1941 and 1943 combined the two techniques in the Armour-piercing discarding sabot (APDS) round. The sabot replaced the outer metal shell of the APCR. While in the gun the shot had a large base area to get maximum acceleration from the propelling charge but once outside the sabot fell away to give just a heavy shot of small cross-sectional area.

[edit]
Modern design
The APDS was initially the main design of KE weapon. The logical progression was to make the shot longer and thinner to concentrate the kinetic energy in a smaller area. However a long, thin rod is aerodynamically unstable; it tends to tumble in flight and gives poorer accuracy. Traditionally shells have been given stability in flight from the rifling of the gun barrel, which imparts a spin to the round. Up to a certain limit this is effective but once the projectile's length is more than 6 or 7 times its diameter, rifling becomes less effective. Adding fins like those of an arrow to the base gives the round stability hence Armour piercing Fin Stabilised discarding sabot (APFSDS). The spin from rifling however decreases the effective penetration of these finned rounds and so they are generally fired from smoothbore guns; a practice that has been taken up by Russia, Germany and the United States in their tanks. APFSDS can still be fired from rifled guns but the sabot is of a modified design incorporating bearings to isolate the spin of the sabot in the barrel from the round itself so far as practicable. Rifled guns have been kept in use by some nations (for instance Britain) because they can then fire other ammunition but the rifling wears in use and they need more maintenance.


KE-penetrators for modern tanks are commonly just 2-3 centimeters in diameter, and 50-60 centimeters long; as more modern penetrators are developed, their length tends to increase and the diameter to decrease. To maximize the amount of kinetic energy released on the target, the penetrator must be made of a dense material, such as tungsten or depleted uranium (DU) alloy. The hardness of the penetrator is of less importance, but is still important as abrasion is a major component of the penetrator defeat mechanism. As DU is of iteself not particularly hard it is alloyed with nickel and/or zinc. A minor advantage (from a military perspective) of DU is that it is pyrophoric; the heated fragments of the penetrator ignite after impact on contact with air. Additionally, DU penetrators exhibit significant adiabatic shear band formation. During impact, fractures along these bands cause the tip of the penetrator to continuously shed material. This erosion maintains the tip's conical shape. Other materials such as unjacketed tungsten tend to deform into a less effective rounded profile, an effect called "mushrooming".

Few countries use DU ammunition despite its lower cost compared to tungsten because of adverse environmental and health effects. Battle sites where DU rounds have been used typically have residual uranium dust in and around battle-damaged vehicles. This dust is only mildly radioactive but toxic, and the lingering effects of it give public health concerns. It is disputed whether dust from spent DU rounds is linked to cancer and other illnesses such as "Gulf War syndrome".
Typical velocities of APFSDS rounds vary between manufacturers and muzzle length/types. As a typical example, the American General Dynamics KEW-A1 has a muzzle velocity of 1,740 m/s. APFSDS rounds generally operate in the range of 1,400 to 1,850 m/s. The sabots also travel at a huge velocity and upon separation may continue for many hundreds of metres at speeds that can be lethal to troops and damage light vehicles.

The counterpart of APFSDS in rifle ammunition is the saboted flechette. A rifle firing flechettes, the Special Purpose Individual Weapon, was under development for the US Army, but the project was abandoned.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bong30

. It is disputed whether dust from spent DU rounds is linked to cancer and other illnesses such as "Gulf War syndrome".

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I'm glad you posted this article Bong.

It was also disputed for years whether asbestos and or cigarettes contributed to cancer too.

And look how those turned out.



Peace.:thumbsup:

more links about DU...and its effects on our troops and their babies, as well as iraqis and their babies...cancer's only up 5+ times in iraq since we started liberating them with DU, but that's the price of their freedom i guess.

http://boards.cannabis.com/search.php?searchid=616088

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cancer+in+iraq

No that is the price of thick armor.......... we need to penatrate it.

so easy...


why dont you post about radiation from an Xray piss? It causes cancer and Problems.

Just doesnt fit your lefty objective is why.............. Please


Here is a pic of your French dirty bomb