sources: CEA
apparently it only relates to certain elements, of which depleted uranium is not part? yet its lifespan is 4.5 million years ...
"in theory it still works ..."
what is uranium? we all produce it, by consuming electricity ...
*******************************
The other industrial plague powder.
Among the many deadly pollutants produced by scientists on Earth, we find metallic uranium resulting from the denaturation of natural uranium rocks. Uranium is indeed an element which is found in the form of ore everywhere in the earth's layer but in no case in the form of metal. There is on average less than 1 kg of uranium per tonne of earth and rock and the richest mines contain from 1,5 kg to 5 kg of uranium ore per tonne.
This uranium ore is formed of 3 isotopes intimately mixed and gathered in tiny samples which we find scattered in nature in the following stable proportions: U234: 0,0054%, U235: 0,7110%, U238: 99,2830%. Of these three isotopes only U235 is both fissile and capable of supporting a chain reaction. (The fission of a single atom of U235, namely its division into at least two “smaller” atoms, via the 2 released neutrons stimulates the fission of 2 other atoms of U235 which in turn cause fission of 4 other atoms and so on.) These two prized features of the U235 are used in the fuel of nuclear power plants and in the explosives of atomic bombs.
Natural ore, too diluted and insufficiently radioactive, is however unsuitable for maintaining this chain reaction. To do this, it must be "enriched" by bringing it to the desired radioactive density. A first partial "enrichment" produces the "Yellow cake" by artificial concentration of the radioactive atoms dispersed in the ore. Uranium grain after uranium grain, uranium is separated by chemical aggression from the lands and rocks with which nature had intermingled it.
A second and more delicate subsequent “enrichment”, by centrifugation or gas diffusion, will then increase the U235 content before making it an artificial uranium metal. This second enrichment will bring uranium 235 to at least 1,5% of the mass of uranium to make fuel or to at least 90% to make an explosive. The final enrichment therefore consists in enriching the uranium 235 content of a mass by taking a part of the uranium 238 from it.
The part removed and unusable as fuel or explosive is called "depleted uranium" in the sense that it will now contain a smaller proportion of uranium 235 atoms (there will always be a portion left) than it had at the start . “Depleted” uranium is also recovered by reprocessing atomic fuel waste. There the U238 will be partially depleted not only of the not consumed U235, but also of the various activation by-products, including plutonium and uranium 236, and fission products created during the energy production cycle. .
"Depleted" uranium is an artificial, heavy, toxic and radioactive metal that contains a smaller proportion of uranium 235 than there is in uranium ores but a greater amount of uranium per gram than have the minerals!
This common term for "depleted" uranium is one of the most misleading there is. He suggests that he is not dangerous. Despite the crazy expenses caused by its delicate civil and military storage, despite the severe regulations which concern it, despite the ban which strikes citizens to dispose of it at their will, despite the irrefutable scientific evidence, despite the large cemeteries of young soldiers fallen well after the battle and the gigantic contingents sick more than half1, despite the meteoric growth of diseases in the countries martyred with uranium and in the world, in spite of the innumerable genetic monsters put in the world in these accursed lands2, we dare still proclaim it safe. In order to convince ourselves of this, we compare it to uranium ores to declare it less aggressive than them; mixing there a truth of proportion, the least content of U235 of the AU, with a confusing lie of density, while bringing back the AU, in fact not with ores, but with another uranium industry l "not depleted" that l 'we decree "natural". This is a pure and simple scam. First of all, whether metallic uranium is "depleted" or not changes little in its danger. It is an Alpha transmitter and it remains whole and deadly in the event of internal contamination even if it is free of uranium 235. With a few Becquerel “235” less it still has artificially condensed a few Becquerel “238” too many. “Depleted” uranium is also induced radiological cancer. Then that if the AU certainly contains a lower proportion of uranium
235 than that found in nature, its density of uranium 238 per gram is, on the other hand, decidedly higher. Nature does not concentrate uranium atoms, the nuclear industry does. In a gram of uranium, depleted or not, there is indeed 98% of uranium while in a gram of ore there is at best only 0,5%. (It will also be noted that uranium 235 represents, at most, 0,00356% of 1 tonne of ore but, at least, 0,0142% of 1 tonne of “depleted” uranium. There is therefore 4 times more of uranium-235 in “depleted” uranium only in an equivalent mass of ore.) In nature one never finds a gram of pure uranium, which is more metallic, in one piece. The simple fact that it is a prefabricated concentrate makes artificial uranium more radioactive than the natural element from which it was obtained. Even if 100% depleted, 1 gram of uranium is still more radioactive than a gram of uranium ore. Let them pass a detector over them! He's crackling more with the AU! Strange, is it not, for an element that is less aggressive than life?
Yet it is this uranium 238 "depleted in uranium 235 but more radioactive than life" that the nuclear industries sold to the military and introduced into various projectiles as a pyrophore armor-piercing device. Notwithstanding international conventions which prohibit its use, since the fall of the Berlin Wall already more than 8000 tonnes of "depleted" uranium have "burned" in the various theaters of operation and the various ranges. Uranium 238 is a recognized toxic and radiological fish3 which has a radioactive half-life of 4,5 billion
years and a half-life of 5 years in metallic form (which is an insoluble form) whereas it is only 3 days in mineral form (which is a soluble form). It is an isotope which expels at each shot an electromagnetic gamma ray of 48 KeV at the speed of 300.000 km / s and a heavy Alpha particle of 4,268 MeV at the speed of 20.000 km / s comprising 2 protons and 2 neutrons joined together. Metallourd and pyrophore, the density of 18,95 Kg per liter makes uranium an armor-piercing perforator without rival and an incomparable radiological polluter of biosphere and lungs.
More than 70% of the uranium metal of projectiles is pulverized in a colossal number of particles, burning during the perforation of the target that it literally melts as the temperature is high (3000 °).
Each gram of uranium that burns produces indeed at least a hundred billion ultra-fine dust (from 0,1 nanometer to 100 micron for an average size of 0,5 micron4). 60% of this dust measures less than 2 microns and, like gases, can thus cross all the protective barriers to penetrate directly into the lungs before passing into the blood which will transport them here and there in the tissues.
The internal biological effects of uranium: depleted uranium, cheap tumor.
Pulled in contact with the tissues, the Alpha particles can each penetrate them over 1/20 of a millimeter (50 microns) by crossing about five biological cells. These alpha particles emitted by various radio-elements including uranium, so harmless when emitted from outside the body become lethal when drawn from inside the body. (A bit like arsenic which is harmless in its vial but deadly in the stomach.) All the ionizing energy will be absorbed by a mass of tissue reduced to the extreme.
It is the effect of internal proximity demonstrated and calculated in 1978 by Maurice Eugène André5 and later even photographed6. It is this effect of internal proximity that the nuclear industries obscure so much that they know how criminals are ultimately the inodore radioactive effluents that they release and that we all breathe. These Alpha particles are sub-atomic "radio-biological" projectiles that attack living targets of atomic size. They disrupt the functioning of “life atoms” by undermining the physical and chemical bases of cell life7. They ionize the molecules.
Radioactive dust is therefore all the more dangerous when it becomes small. Tiny they penetrate the organism without obstacle; stand still for years near cells, even invade them, putting them within reach of their short but powerful ionizing radius of action. Installed in the tissues, these insoluble metals reduced to micrometric or even nanometric dust then repeatedly bombard the cells, ionize them chronically without allowing them to restore themselves. This harmful action of the Alpha is all the more devious as it operates histologically in an invisible and insensitive manner. Our senses, as much as the dosimeters, are indeed incapable of detecting the intromission of such small radioactive particles within the tissues, they are incapable of capturing the pain which the few ionized cells feel. It will take them years, once the pain has spread and the pain is noticeable, for them to sound their belated alarm. “Alpha” radioactive dust is therefore a veritable microscopic atomic weapon which secretly contaminates each organism which breathes or ingests it.
The dispersion of undetectable radioactive aerosols by thousands of tonnes during the last wars puts humanity and life at risk. Each cubic meter of air is poisoned. Nanoparticles fly further and far and many will remain in the air forever. The biosphere is transformed into a slow and eternal radiological gas chamber8 in a general indifference supported by the imperceptibility of the danger and the mutism complicit in science.
Particles fly, tumors grow, 9 the law of silence reigns. Inhale Exhale. Business must go on until the end of the terminal solution.
***************
Nuclear waste photo album:
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/DU-Baby2003.htm
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Hot-Parti ... ue1997.htm
http://www.cea.fr/fr/Publications/clefs2.asp?id=43
http://www.llrc.org/aldermastrept.pdf