The Russian 9M730 Burevestnik cruise missile (NATO designation: SSC-X-9 Skyfall) uses a direct-cycle air-breathing nuclear propulsion system that leaves a radioactive trail behind it.This conclusion was reached by two scientists […]
U-238 (the most common isotope in natural uranium, present to an even higher degree in depeleted uranium which has had the shorter-lived U-235 removed) has a half life in the billions of years and with such a long half-life life even with a large mass of the material you won’t be getting many radiological decays occurring. Which is not to say it’s good for you to ingest or contact, it’s definitely not, but that’s more due to the chemical properties it has as a heavy metal (think like how lead is bad for you) than its radiological ones.
Fission products formed in a nuclear reactor on the other hand have half lives all over the place from tiny fractions of a second to days, years, millions of years and so on. So you can get a high dose from short-lived isotopes going through many decays if you happen to be around them while they’re freshly generated, and intermediate life isotopes can persist in the environment for sustained periods while still dosing up the area. So a flying nuclear reactor venting its exhaust over you is quite a lot worse radiologically speaking than some depleted uranium being in your environment, though that said the chemical properties of having uranium in your drinking water or the physical properties of a high density round shot at you are plenty bad regardless of the radiological harm being often overstated.
Your explanation makes sense to me (a very non-physicist), but I remember more than one journalism piece from a decade or so ago about uncharacteristically high rates of cancer in areas in Afghanistan or Iraq that were basically carpeted with US depleted-uranium bullets. Do you think that’s a fluke? Is it possible there is poor quality control in manufacturing the bullets, resulting in some stuff with shorter half-life in there? Could the cancer rates be due to the heavy-metal properties?
(Of course it’s a correlation/causation thing, so there could be other causes, too, but I’m interested in what you think of this)
They show elevated health issues. The person who responded to me is differentiating between radiation and toxicity. But the primary detriment and premise is still health issues to civilians caused by munitions.
I’m speaking to radiation since that’s my interest. The specific activity of uranium is generally around 14.8 Bq/mg vs. 25.4 Bq/mg for natural uranium, where one Bq is one nuclear transformation per second. That sounds like a lot but as far as radioactive materials goes is incredibly low. The Americium-241 used in smoke detectors for instance has 127 million Bq/mg.
Incorrect, if anything, understated - but because it’s a bunch of brown people and nobody cares enough to read the research
As I said before there certainly are health impacts but they are largely arising from the chemical toxicity, not the radiological activity. It is ONLY the radiological aspect where I said the risk was overstated, I recognize that the chemical one is very real. For example, the WHO 2001 report on depleted uranium that your second source cites gave a limit on depleted uranium of 0.28 mg/L in drinking water for its radiological toxicity… and a 140x smaller (!) provisional guideline of 0.002 mg/L for the chemical toxicity.
Your third source states this in its summary:
In this report, it is concluded that the radiation
doses from DU do not pose a radiological hazard to
the population at the four studied locations in
southern Iraq. The estimated annual committed
effective radiation doses that could arise from
exposure to DU residues are low, always less than
100 µSv/a and only to a few, if any, individuals, and
therefore of little radiological concern. The
estimated radiation doses are less than those
received on average by individuals from natural
sources of radiation in the environment (worldwide
average 2.4 mSv/a), below internationally
recommended dose limits for members of the public (1 mSv/a) and below the action level of 10 mSv/a set out in the IAEA Safety Standard on Remediationof Areas Contaminated by Past Activities and Accidents [1] to establish whether remedial actions are necessary.
U-238 (the most common isotope in natural uranium, present to an even higher degree in depeleted uranium which has had the shorter-lived U-235 removed) has a half life in the billions of years and with such a long half-life life even with a large mass of the material you won’t be getting many radiological decays occurring. Which is not to say it’s good for you to ingest or contact, it’s definitely not, but that’s more due to the chemical properties it has as a heavy metal (think like how lead is bad for you) than its radiological ones.
Fission products formed in a nuclear reactor on the other hand have half lives all over the place from tiny fractions of a second to days, years, millions of years and so on. So you can get a high dose from short-lived isotopes going through many decays if you happen to be around them while they’re freshly generated, and intermediate life isotopes can persist in the environment for sustained periods while still dosing up the area. So a flying nuclear reactor venting its exhaust over you is quite a lot worse radiologically speaking than some depleted uranium being in your environment, though that said the chemical properties of having uranium in your drinking water or the physical properties of a high density round shot at you are plenty bad regardless of the radiological harm being often overstated.
Your explanation makes sense to me (a very non-physicist), but I remember more than one journalism piece from a decade or so ago about uncharacteristically high rates of cancer in areas in Afghanistan or Iraq that were basically carpeted with US depleted-uranium bullets. Do you think that’s a fluke? Is it possible there is poor quality control in manufacturing the bullets, resulting in some stuff with shorter half-life in there? Could the cancer rates be due to the heavy-metal properties?
(Of course it’s a correlation/causation thing, so there could be other causes, too, but I’m interested in what you think of this)
Probably from the chemical properties; very unlikely from radiation.
Reading through this. There are plenty of carcinogenic chemicals such as arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt…
Did I say worse or better? Reread what I said and answer within context.
The premise once again for the pedantic minded - Russia can get fucked, but don’t put the US on a pedestal
Incorrect, if anything, understated - but because it’s a bunch of brown people and nobody cares enough to read the research
Now apply those findings to a small enclave like Gaza.
I feel like you didn’t actually read the papers you linked.
They show elevated health issues. The person who responded to me is differentiating between radiation and toxicity. But the primary detriment and premise is still health issues to civilians caused by munitions.
I’m speaking to radiation since that’s my interest. The specific activity of uranium is generally around 14.8 Bq/mg vs. 25.4 Bq/mg for natural uranium, where one Bq is one nuclear transformation per second. That sounds like a lot but as far as radioactive materials goes is incredibly low. The Americium-241 used in smoke detectors for instance has 127 million Bq/mg.
As I said before there certainly are health impacts but they are largely arising from the chemical toxicity, not the radiological activity. It is ONLY the radiological aspect where I said the risk was overstated, I recognize that the chemical one is very real. For example, the WHO 2001 report on depleted uranium that your second source cites gave a limit on depleted uranium of 0.28 mg/L in drinking water for its radiological toxicity… and a 140x smaller (!) provisional guideline of 0.002 mg/L for the chemical toxicity.
Your third source states this in its summary:
I’m glad you have interests…but we don’t share them.
Do you think this is going well for you? Because it’s not.
I’m sorry, was this supposed to be an argument? Can you point out the premise?