HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------
http://mondediplo.com/2002/03/03uranium
Le Monde diplomatique, March 15, 2002
DEPLETED URANIUM IN BUNKER BOMBS
America's big dirty secret
The United States loudly and proudly boasted
this month of its new bomb currently being
used against al-Qaida hold-outs in
Afghanistan; it sucks the air from
underground installations, suffocating those
within. The US has also admitted that it has
used depleted uranium weaponry over the last
decade against bunkers in Iraq, Kosovo, and
now Afghanistan.
by ROBERT JAMES PARSONS *
"The immediate concern for medical professionals and
employees of aid organisations remains the threat of extensive
depleted uranium (DU) contamination in Afghanistan." This is
one of the conclusions of a 130-page report, Mystery Metal
Nightmare in Afghanistan? (1), by Dai Williams, an independent
researcher and occupational psychologist. It is the result of more
than a year of research into DU and its effects on those exposed
to it.
Using internet sites of both NGOs (2) and arms manufacturers,
Williams has come up with information that he has
cross-checked and compared with weapons that the Pentagon
has reported - indeed boasted about - using during the war.
What emerges is a startling and frightening vision of war, both in
Afghanistan and in the future.
Since 1997 the United States has been modifying and upgrading
its missiles and guided (smart) bombs. Prototypes of these
bombs were tested in the Kosovo mountains in 1999, but a far
greater range has been tested in Afghanistan. The upgrade
involves replacing a conventional warhead by a heavy, dense
metal one (3). Calculating the volume and the weight of this
mystery metal leads to two possible conclusions: it is either
tungsten or depleted uranium.
Tungsten poses problems. Its melting point (3,422°C) makes it
very hard to work; it is expensive; it is produced mostly by
China; and it does not burn. DU is pyrophoric, burning on
impact or if it is ignited, with a melting point of 1,132°C; it is
much easier to process; and as nuclear waste, it is available free
to arms manufacturers. Further, using it in a range of weapons
significantly reduces the US nuclear waste storage problem.
This type of weapon can penetrate many metres of reinforced
concrete or rock in seconds. It is equipped with a detonator
controlled by a computer that measures the density of the
material passed through and, when the warhead reaches the
targeted void or a set depth, detonates the warhead, which then
has an explosive and incendiary effect. The DU burns fiercely
and rapidly, carbonising everything in the void, while the DU
itself is transformed into a fine uranium oxide powder. Although
only 30% of the DU of a 30mm penetrator round is oxidised, the
DU charge of a missile oxidises 100%. Most of the dust particles
produced measure less than 1.5 microns, small enough to be
breathed in.
For a few researchers in this area, the controversy over the use
of DU weapons during the Kosovo war got side-tracked. Instead
of asking what weapons might have been used against most of
the targets (underground mountain bunkers) acknowledged by
Nato, discussion focused on 30mm anti-tank penetrator rounds,
which Nato had admitted using but which would have been
ineffective against superhardened underground installations.
However, as long as the questions focused on such anti-tank
penetrators, they dealt with rounds whose maximum weight was
five kilos for a 120mm round. The DU explosive charges in the
guided bomb systems used in Afghanistan can weigh as much as
one and a half metric tons (as in Raytheon's Bunker Buster -
GBU-28) (4).
Who cares?
In Geneva, where most of the aid agencies active in Afghanistan
are based, Williams's report has caused varied reactions. The
United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees
and the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs
have circulated it. But it does not seem to have worried agency
and programme directors much. Only Médecins sans Frontiéres
and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) say they fear an
environmental and health catastrophe.
In March and April 2001, UNEP and the World Health
Organisation (WHO) published reports on DU, reports that are
frequently cited by those claiming DU is innocuous. The
Pentagon emphasises that the organisations are independent and
neutral. But the UNEP study is, at best, compromised. The
WHO study is unreliable.
The Kosovo assessment mission that provided the basis for the
UNEP analysis was organised using maps supplied by Nato;
Nato troops accompanied the researchers to protect them from
unexploded munitions, including cluster bomb sub-munitions.
These sub-munitions, as Williams discovered, were probably
equipped with DU shaped-charges. Nato troops prevented
researchers from any contact with DU sub-munitions, even from
discovering their existence.
During the 16 months before the UNEP mission, the Pentagon
sent at least 10 study teams into the field and did major clean-up
operations (5). Out of 8,112 anti-tank penetrator rounds fired on
the sites studied, the UNEP team recovered only 11, although
many more would not have been burned. And, 18 to 20 months
after the firing, the amount of dust found directly on sites hit by
these rounds was particularly small.
The WHO undertook no proper epidemiological study, only an
academic desk study. Under pressure from the International
Atomic Energy Agency, the WHO confined itself to studying DU
as a heavy-metal, chemical contaminant. In January 2001,
alerted to the imminent publication by Le Monde diplomatique
of an article attacking its inaction (6), the WHO held a press
conference and announced a $2m fund - eventually $20m -
for research into DU. According Dr Michael Repacholi of the
WHO, the report on DU, under way since 1999 and supervised
by the British geologist Barry Smith, would be expanded to
include radiation contamination. The work would include
analyses of urine of people exposed to DU, conducted to
determine the exposure level.
But the monograph, published 10 weeks later, was merely a
survey of existing literature on the subject. Out of hundreds of
thousands of monographs published since 1945, which ought to
have been explored in depth, the report covered only
monographs on chemical contamination, with a few noteworthy
exceptions. The few articles about dealing with radiation
contamination that had been consulted came from the Pentagon
and the Rand Corporation, the Pentagon think- tank. It is
unsurprising that the report was bland.
The recommendations of the two reports were common sense,
and repeated advice already given by the WHO and echoed
regularly by the aid organisations working in Kosovo. This
included marking off known target sites, collecting penetrator
rounds wherever possible, keeping children away from
contaminated sites, and the suggested monitoring of some wells
later on.
Uranium plus
The problem can be summed up as two key findings:
o Radiation emitted by DU threatens the human body because,
once DU dust has been inhaled, it becomes an internal radiation
source; international radiation protection standards, the basis of
expert claims that DU is harmless, deal only with external
radiation sources;
o Dirty DU - the UNEP report, for all its failings, deserves
credit for mentioning this. Uranium from reactors, recycled for
use in munitions, contains additional highly toxic elements, such
as plutonium, 1.6 kilogrammes of which could kill 8bn people.
Rather than depleted uranium, it should be called uranium plus.
In a French TV documentary on Canal+ in January 2001 (7), a
team of researchers presented the results of an investigation into
a gaseous diffusion - recycling - plant in Paducah, Kentucky,
US. According to the lawyer for 100,000 plaintiffs, who are past
and present plant employees, they were contaminated because of
flagrant non-compliance with basic safety standards; the entire
plant is irrevocably contaminated, as is everything it produces.
The documentary claimed that the DU in the missiles that were
dropped on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq is likely to be a
product of this plant.
These weapons represent more than just a new approach to
warfare. The US rearmament programme launched during
Ronald Reagan's presidency was based on the premise that the
victor in future conflicts would be the side that destroyed the
enemy's command and communications centres. Such centres
are increasingly located in superhardened bunkers deep
underground.
Hitting such sites with nuclear weapons would do the job well,
but also produce radiation that even the Pentagon would have to
acknowledge as fearsome, not to mention the bad public
relations arising from mushroom-shaped clouds in a world aware
of the dangers of nuclear war. DU warheads seem clean: they
produce a fire modest in comparison with a nuclear detonation,
though the incendiary effect can be just as destructive.
The information that Williams has gathered (8) shows that after
computer modelling in 1987, the US conducted the first real
operational tests against Baghdad in 1991. The war in Kosovo
provided further opportunity to test, on impressively hard
targets, DU weapon prototypes as well as weapons already in
production. Afghan-istan has seen an extension and amplification
of such tests. But at the Pentagon there is little transparency
about this.
Williams cites several press articles (9) in December 2001
mentioning NBC (nuclear-biological-chemical) teams in the field
checking for possible contamination. Such contamination,
according to the US government, would be attributed to the
Taliban. But, last October, Afghan doctors, citing rapid deaths
from internal ailments, were accusing the coalition of using
chemical and radioactive weapons. The symptoms they reported
(haemorrhaging, pulmonary constriction and vomiting) could
have resulted from radiation contamination.
On 5 December, when a friendly-fire bomb hit coalition soldiers,
media representatives were all immediately removed from the
scene and locked up in a hangar. According to the Pentagon, the
bomb was a GBU-31, carrying a BLU-109 warhead. The
Canal+ documentary shows an arms manufacturer's sales
representative at an international fair in Dubai in 1999, just after
the Kosovo war. He is presenting a BLU-109 warhead and
describing its penetration capabilities against superhardened
underground targets, explaining that this model had been tested
in a recent war.
Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defence, on 16 January this
year admitted that the US had found radiation in Afghanistan
(10). But this, he reassured, was merely from DU warheads
(supposedly belonging to al-Qaida); he did not explain how
al-Qaida could have launched them without planes. Williams
points out that, even if the coalition has used no DU weapons,
those attributed to al-Qaida might turn out to be an even greater
source of contamination, especially if they came from Russia, in
which case the DU could be even dirtier than that from
Paducah.
Following its assessment mission in the Balkans, UNEP set up a
post-conflict assessment unit. Its director, Henrik Slotte, has
announced that it is ready to work in Afghanistan as soon as
possible, given proper security, unimpeded access to hit sites,
and financing. The WHO remains silent. When questions about
the current state of the DU research fund were addressed to Jon
Lidon, spokesman for the director general, Dr Gro Harlem
Brundtland, the WHO did not answer. Yet Williams urges that
studies begin immediately, as victims of severe UD exposure
may soon all be dead, yet with their deaths attributed to the
rigours of winter.
In Jefferson County, Indiana, the Pentagon has closed the
200-acre (80-hectare) proving ground where it used to test-fire
DU rounds. The lowest estimate for cleaning up the site comes
to $7.8bn, not including permanent storage of the earth to a
depth of six metres and of all the vegetation. Considering the
cost too high, the military finally decided to give the tract to the
National Park Service for a nature preserve - an offer that was
promptly refused. Now there is talk of turning it into a National
Sacrifice Zone and closing it forever. This gives an idea of the
fate awaiting those regions of the planet where the US has used
and will use depleted uranium.
* Journalist, Geneva
(1) See website
(2) The internet sites of Janes Defense Information, the Federation of
American Scientists, the Centre of Defense Information.
(3) See FAS Website
(4) FAS and USA Today
(5) Chronology of environmental sampling in the Balkans
(6) See Deafening silence on depleted uranium, Le Monde diplomatique
English edition, February 2001.
(7) La Guerre radioactive secrète, by Martin Meissonnier, Roger Trilling,
Guillaume d'Allessandro and Luc Hermann, first broadcast in February 2000;
updated and rebroadcast in January 2001 under the title L'Uranium appauvri,
nous avons retrouvé l'usine contaminée by Roger Trilling and Luc Hermann.
(8) The Use of Modeling and Simulation in the Planning of Attacks on Iraqi
Chemical and Biological Warfare Targets
(9) For example "New Evidence is Adding to US Fears of Al-Qaida Dirty
Bomb", International Herald Tribune, December 5, 2001; "Uranium
Reportedly Found in Tunnel Complex", USA Today, December 24, 2001.
(10) "US Says More Weapons Sites Found in Afghanistan", Reuters, January
16, 2002.
Translated by the author
Le Monde diplomatique, March 15, 2002
DEPLETED URANIUM IN BUNKER BOMBS
America's big dirty secret
The United States loudly and proudly boasted
this month of its new bomb currently being
used against al-Qaida hold-outs in
Afghanistan; it sucks the air from
underground installations, suffocating those
within. The US has also admitted that it has
used depleted uranium weaponry over the last
decade against bunkers in Iraq, Kosovo, and
now Afghanistan.
by ROBERT JAMES PARSONS *
"The immediate concern for medical professionals and
employees of aid organisations remains the threat of extensive
depleted uranium (DU) contamination in Afghanistan." This is
one of the conclusions of a 130-page report, Mystery Metal
Nightmare in Afghanistan? (1), by Dai Williams, an independent
researcher and occupational psychologist. It is the result of more
than a year of research into DU and its effects on those exposed
to it.
Using internet sites of both NGOs (2) and arms manufacturers,
Williams has come up with information that he has
cross-checked and compared with weapons that the Pentagon
has reported - indeed boasted about - using during the war.
What emerges is a startling and frightening vision of war, both in
Afghanistan and in the future.
Since 1997 the United States has been modifying and upgrading
its missiles and guided (smart) bombs. Prototypes of these
bombs were tested in the Kosovo mountains in 1999, but a far
greater range has been tested in Afghanistan. The upgrade
involves replacing a conventional warhead by a heavy, dense
metal one (3). Calculating the volume and the weight of this
mystery metal leads to two possible conclusions: it is either
tungsten or depleted uranium.
Tungsten poses problems. Its melting point (3,422°C) makes it
very hard to work; it is expensive; it is produced mostly by
China; and it does not burn. DU is pyrophoric, burning on
impact or if it is ignited, with a melting point of 1,132°C; it is
much easier to process; and as nuclear waste, it is available free
to arms manufacturers. Further, using it in a range of weapons
significantly reduces the US nuclear waste storage problem.
This type of weapon can penetrate many metres of reinforced
concrete or rock in seconds. It is equipped with a detonator
controlled by a computer that measures the density of the
material passed through and, when the warhead reaches the
targeted void or a set depth, detonates the warhead, which then
has an explosive and incendiary effect. The DU burns fiercely
and rapidly, carbonising everything in the void, while the DU
itself is transformed into a fine uranium oxide powder. Although
only 30% of the DU of a 30mm penetrator round is oxidised, the
DU charge of a missile oxidises 100%. Most of the dust particles
produced measure less than 1.5 microns, small enough to be
breathed in.
For a few researchers in this area, the controversy over the use
of DU weapons during the Kosovo war got side-tracked. Instead
of asking what weapons might have been used against most of
the targets (underground mountain bunkers) acknowledged by
Nato, discussion focused on 30mm anti-tank penetrator rounds,
which Nato had admitted using but which would have been
ineffective against superhardened underground installations.
However, as long as the questions focused on such anti-tank
penetrators, they dealt with rounds whose maximum weight was
five kilos for a 120mm round. The DU explosive charges in the
guided bomb systems used in Afghanistan can weigh as much as
one and a half metric tons (as in Raytheon's Bunker Buster -
GBU-28) (4).
Who cares?
In Geneva, where most of the aid agencies active in Afghanistan
are based, Williams's report has caused varied reactions. The
United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees
and the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs
have circulated it. But it does not seem to have worried agency
and programme directors much. Only Médecins sans Frontiéres
and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) say they fear an
environmental and health catastrophe.
In March and April 2001, UNEP and the World Health
Organisation (WHO) published reports on DU, reports that are
frequently cited by those claiming DU is innocuous. The
Pentagon emphasises that the organisations are independent and
neutral. But the UNEP study is, at best, compromised. The
WHO study is unreliable.
The Kosovo assessment mission that provided the basis for the
UNEP analysis was organised using maps supplied by Nato;
Nato troops accompanied the researchers to protect them from
unexploded munitions, including cluster bomb sub-munitions.
These sub-munitions, as Williams discovered, were probably
equipped with DU shaped-charges. Nato troops prevented
researchers from any contact with DU sub-munitions, even from
discovering their existence.
During the 16 months before the UNEP mission, the Pentagon
sent at least 10 study teams into the field and did major clean-up
operations (5). Out of 8,112 anti-tank penetrator rounds fired on
the sites studied, the UNEP team recovered only 11, although
many more would not have been burned. And, 18 to 20 months
after the firing, the amount of dust found directly on sites hit by
these rounds was particularly small.
The WHO undertook no proper epidemiological study, only an
academic desk study. Under pressure from the International
Atomic Energy Agency, the WHO confined itself to studying DU
as a heavy-metal, chemical contaminant. In January 2001,
alerted to the imminent publication by Le Monde diplomatique
of an article attacking its inaction (6), the WHO held a press
conference and announced a $2m fund - eventually $20m -
for research into DU. According Dr Michael Repacholi of the
WHO, the report on DU, under way since 1999 and supervised
by the British geologist Barry Smith, would be expanded to
include radiation contamination. The work would include
analyses of urine of people exposed to DU, conducted to
determine the exposure level.
But the monograph, published 10 weeks later, was merely a
survey of existing literature on the subject. Out of hundreds of
thousands of monographs published since 1945, which ought to
have been explored in depth, the report covered only
monographs on chemical contamination, with a few noteworthy
exceptions. The few articles about dealing with radiation
contamination that had been consulted came from the Pentagon
and the Rand Corporation, the Pentagon think- tank. It is
unsurprising that the report was bland.
The recommendations of the two reports were common sense,
and repeated advice already given by the WHO and echoed
regularly by the aid organisations working in Kosovo. This
included marking off known target sites, collecting penetrator
rounds wherever possible, keeping children away from
contaminated sites, and the suggested monitoring of some wells
later on.
Uranium plus
The problem can be summed up as two key findings:
o Radiation emitted by DU threatens the human body because,
once DU dust has been inhaled, it becomes an internal radiation
source; international radiation protection standards, the basis of
expert claims that DU is harmless, deal only with external
radiation sources;
o Dirty DU - the UNEP report, for all its failings, deserves
credit for mentioning this. Uranium from reactors, recycled for
use in munitions, contains additional highly toxic elements, such
as plutonium, 1.6 kilogrammes of which could kill 8bn people.
Rather than depleted uranium, it should be called uranium plus.
In a French TV documentary on Canal+ in January 2001 (7), a
team of researchers presented the results of an investigation into
a gaseous diffusion - recycling - plant in Paducah, Kentucky,
US. According to the lawyer for 100,000 plaintiffs, who are past
and present plant employees, they were contaminated because of
flagrant non-compliance with basic safety standards; the entire
plant is irrevocably contaminated, as is everything it produces.
The documentary claimed that the DU in the missiles that were
dropped on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq is likely to be a
product of this plant.
These weapons represent more than just a new approach to
warfare. The US rearmament programme launched during
Ronald Reagan's presidency was based on the premise that the
victor in future conflicts would be the side that destroyed the
enemy's command and communications centres. Such centres
are increasingly located in superhardened bunkers deep
underground.
Hitting such sites with nuclear weapons would do the job well,
but also produce radiation that even the Pentagon would have to
acknowledge as fearsome, not to mention the bad public
relations arising from mushroom-shaped clouds in a world aware
of the dangers of nuclear war. DU warheads seem clean: they
produce a fire modest in comparison with a nuclear detonation,
though the incendiary effect can be just as destructive.
The information that Williams has gathered (8) shows that after
computer modelling in 1987, the US conducted the first real
operational tests against Baghdad in 1991. The war in Kosovo
provided further opportunity to test, on impressively hard
targets, DU weapon prototypes as well as weapons already in
production. Afghan-istan has seen an extension and amplification
of such tests. But at the Pentagon there is little transparency
about this.
Williams cites several press articles (9) in December 2001
mentioning NBC (nuclear-biological-chemical) teams in the field
checking for possible contamination. Such contamination,
according to the US government, would be attributed to the
Taliban. But, last October, Afghan doctors, citing rapid deaths
from internal ailments, were accusing the coalition of using
chemical and radioactive weapons. The symptoms they reported
(haemorrhaging, pulmonary constriction and vomiting) could
have resulted from radiation contamination.
On 5 December, when a friendly-fire bomb hit coalition soldiers,
media representatives were all immediately removed from the
scene and locked up in a hangar. According to the Pentagon, the
bomb was a GBU-31, carrying a BLU-109 warhead. The
Canal+ documentary shows an arms manufacturer's sales
representative at an international fair in Dubai in 1999, just after
the Kosovo war. He is presenting a BLU-109 warhead and
describing its penetration capabilities against superhardened
underground targets, explaining that this model had been tested
in a recent war.
Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defence, on 16 January this
year admitted that the US had found radiation in Afghanistan
(10). But this, he reassured, was merely from DU warheads
(supposedly belonging to al-Qaida); he did not explain how
al-Qaida could have launched them without planes. Williams
points out that, even if the coalition has used no DU weapons,
those attributed to al-Qaida might turn out to be an even greater
source of contamination, especially if they came from Russia, in
which case the DU could be even dirtier than that from
Paducah.
Following its assessment mission in the Balkans, UNEP set up a
post-conflict assessment unit. Its director, Henrik Slotte, has
announced that it is ready to work in Afghanistan as soon as
possible, given proper security, unimpeded access to hit sites,
and financing. The WHO remains silent. When questions about
the current state of the DU research fund were addressed to Jon
Lidon, spokesman for the director general, Dr Gro Harlem
Brundtland, the WHO did not answer. Yet Williams urges that
studies begin immediately, as victims of severe UD exposure
may soon all be dead, yet with their deaths attributed to the
rigours of winter.
In Jefferson County, Indiana, the Pentagon has closed the
200-acre (80-hectare) proving ground where it used to test-fire
DU rounds. The lowest estimate for cleaning up the site comes
to $7.8bn, not including permanent storage of the earth to a
depth of six metres and of all the vegetation. Considering the
cost too high, the military finally decided to give the tract to the
National Park Service for a nature preserve - an offer that was
promptly refused. Now there is talk of turning it into a National
Sacrifice Zone and closing it forever. This gives an idea of the
fate awaiting those regions of the planet where the US has used
and will use depleted uranium.
* Journalist, Geneva
(1) See website
(2) The internet sites of Janes Defense Information, the Federation of
American Scientists, the Centre of Defense Information.
(3) See FAS Website
(4) FAS and USA Today
(5) Chronology of environmental sampling in the Balkans
(6) See Deafening silence on depleted uranium, Le Monde diplomatique
English edition, February 2001.
(7) La Guerre radioactive secrète, by Martin Meissonnier, Roger Trilling,
Guillaume d'Allessandro and Luc Hermann, first broadcast in February 2000;
updated and rebroadcast in January 2001 under the title L'Uranium appauvri,
nous avons retrouvé l'usine contaminée by Roger Trilling and Luc Hermann.
(8) The Use of Modeling and Simulation in the Planning of Attacks on Iraqi
Chemical and Biological Warfare Targets
(9) For example "New Evidence is Adding to US Fears of Al-Qaida Dirty
Bomb", International Herald Tribune, December 5, 2001; "Uranium
Reportedly Found in Tunnel Complex", USA Today, December 24, 2001.
(10) "US Says More Weapons Sites Found in Afghanistan", Reuters, January
16, 2002.
Translated by the author
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