True, depleted uranium is not fissionable, but it's still nasty stuff. It is used for amor-piercing ammunition and turns into fine dust on impact. For instance, kids playing in abandoned tanks inhale it, and it still radiates alpha and beta particles, leading to lung cancer later in life. It needs to be outlawed.
You're welcome to go to the front lines and attack the Russian tanks with your own preferred tools!
The people doing the actual work, today, use depleted uranium[0] rounds, because they have common sense and prefer to not have a main battle tank survive long enough to shoot back at them. "Let's not use (mildly) toxic weapons" is a fair-weather principle that disappears the moment the weather ceases being fair. Like cluster bombs, or landmines: all of the civilized countries in Europe that adopted these idealistic bans, in peacetime, they're repealing those treaties left and right, now that the moral dilemmas are no longer academic.
Depleted uranium is a toxic metal but not unusually so. Exposure limits are similar to e.g. chromium which is ubiquitous in our lived environment. While you wouldn’t want to breathe it in, depleted uranium is used as a substitute for tungsten, another toxic metal that you also wouldn’t want to breathe in. Fortunately depleted uranium (and tungsten) settle out rapidly; you are exceedingly unlikely to inhale them unless you were proximal at the moment it was vaporized.
The radiation is not a serious concern. It is less radioactive than the potassium in our own bodies, and in vastly smaller quantities.
Depleted uranium isn’t healthy but I don’t think we should be misrepresenting the risk either. Many things in the environment you live in have similar toxicity profiles to depleted uranium.
The alternatives are hardly better. In addition to worse penetration performance, the tungsten alloy alternatives for APFSDS rounds are not good for the body either, particularly if being breathed in as fine dust.
If you have kids playing on recently destroyed armored vehicles, there will be an incredible collection of toxic materials present. Uranium oxides from DU (which, to be clear, are primarily toxic as heavy metals, not from their low radioactivity) are really the least of your worries when compared to all of the other breathable particulates that will be present (e.g. asbestos, all of the toxic plastic combustion products, explosive residues).
Well… don’t stand close to a tank that is being shot at?… or are you worried about the tank crew you are shooting at? good luck „outlawing” killing means, find „more humane” methods of murdering each other. come on.
No, it's weapons-grade fissile material (in microscopic amounts); the engineering material used for its weight, depleted uranium, is not such a thing.
True, depleted uranium is not fissionable, but it's still nasty stuff. It is used for amor-piercing ammunition and turns into fine dust on impact. For instance, kids playing in abandoned tanks inhale it, and it still radiates alpha and beta particles, leading to lung cancer later in life. It needs to be outlawed.
You're welcome to go to the front lines and attack the Russian tanks with your own preferred tools!
The people doing the actual work, today, use depleted uranium[0] rounds, because they have common sense and prefer to not have a main battle tank survive long enough to shoot back at them. "Let's not use (mildly) toxic weapons" is a fair-weather principle that disappears the moment the weather ceases being fair. Like cluster bombs, or landmines: all of the civilized countries in Europe that adopted these idealistic bans, in peacetime, they're repealing those treaties left and right, now that the moral dilemmas are no longer academic.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/us-send-its-first-depleted-ura... ("US to send depleted-uranium munitions to Ukraine")
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Depleted uranium is a toxic metal but not unusually so. Exposure limits are similar to e.g. chromium which is ubiquitous in our lived environment. While you wouldn’t want to breathe it in, depleted uranium is used as a substitute for tungsten, another toxic metal that you also wouldn’t want to breathe in. Fortunately depleted uranium (and tungsten) settle out rapidly; you are exceedingly unlikely to inhale them unless you were proximal at the moment it was vaporized.
The radiation is not a serious concern. It is less radioactive than the potassium in our own bodies, and in vastly smaller quantities.
Depleted uranium isn’t healthy but I don’t think we should be misrepresenting the risk either. Many things in the environment you live in have similar toxicity profiles to depleted uranium.
The alternatives are hardly better. In addition to worse penetration performance, the tungsten alloy alternatives for APFSDS rounds are not good for the body either, particularly if being breathed in as fine dust.
If you have kids playing on recently destroyed armored vehicles, there will be an incredible collection of toxic materials present. Uranium oxides from DU (which, to be clear, are primarily toxic as heavy metals, not from their low radioactivity) are really the least of your worries when compared to all of the other breathable particulates that will be present (e.g. asbestos, all of the toxic plastic combustion products, explosive residues).
> It is used for amor-piercing ammunition and turns into fine dust on impact
How can it be amor-piercing and turn in to fine dust on impact?
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Well… don’t stand close to a tank that is being shot at?… or are you worried about the tank crew you are shooting at? good luck „outlawing” killing means, find „more humane” methods of murdering each other. come on.