Pro memoria – Depleted Uranium DU
ev. Although it has been scientifically proven and decades of experience have shown that bunker-busting bombs containing depleted uranium (DU) have numerous harmful and deadly consequences for soldiers, but above all for the civilian population, contaminating the environment and thus the habitat for a long time, it continues to be used and deployed recklessly. Since 2023, such tank shells have been supplied to Ukraine – according to a parliamentary response1, the United Kingdom supplied “14 Challenger 2 tanks capable of using depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, along with thousands of rounds of Challenger 2 ammunition including depleted uranium armour-piercing rounds.” It is unclear what the United States supplied. Israel apparently uses uranium weapons repeatedly – in the Gaza Strip, in Lebanon2, in Syria, and probably also in Iran. In 1991 and 2003 Iraq, in 1995 Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1999 Serbia/Kosovo, in 2001 Afghanistan – and today the Middle East and Ukraine.
The heavy metal DU is a waste product of uranium enrichment for use in nuclear power plants and the construction of atomic bombs. Easily available and cheap, it is primarily its weapon-technology characteristics respectively its physical and chemical properties that make it suitable for military and armament use in bunker-busting bombs or armour plating. Although it is not only the USA and Great Britain that have used this material. Due to its harmfulness to humans and the environment other countries have quietly replaced it with other materials (e.g. tungsten), among them Switzerland, too.
However, the discussion in the Western media has been dominated by attempts to deflect, downplay or even suppress the issue, even though the radioactive and chemical toxicity of these weapons has been known for decades. Official bodies, not only in the United States and Great Britain, use a lot of scientific vocabulary to talk around the real problem: It is not the lump of heavy metal, which does actually not emit very strong radiation (although it is toxic in itself), but above all the aerosols produced when these weapons are used. These aerosols are created by combustion at immense temperatures at which everything burns up – blown away by the wind and carried by rain to the ground and water. This is all common knowledge. However, the ‘information’ provided to the public is a textbook example of how to (mostly) avoid lying directly, but instead deliberately misinform by distracting attention with irrelevant facts and omitting the crucial details. Or one is preventing relevant studies from becoming known and defaming those who think differently.
The following compilation provides an insight into the known facts, but above all into how cynically people in war zones – civilians and military alike – are treated, but as well the own citizens and soldiers, people everywhere and how it is dealt with the health of many generations.
This also shows how commendable Srđan Aleksić’s commitment is, not only for the people of Serbia and Kosovo.
Respirable and toxic alpha emitters
“Depleted uranium has two excellent properties for military purposes. If it is shaped into a pointed rod and accelerated accordingly, its enormous weight allows it to penetrate steel and reinforced concrete with ease – like hot iron through a piece of butter. This causes abrasion on the uranium rod, which ignites spontaneously due to the enormous frictional heat, with temperatures between 3000 and 5000 degrees Celsius. When such a projectile pierce a tank in a fraction of a second, the depleted uranium catches fire and the soldiers inside the tank are incinerated.”3
“At high temperatures of up to 5000 degrees Celsius, the uranium projectile burns to form ceramicised nanoparticles that are 100 times smaller than a red blood cell. This means that a metal gas is created, which further on remains radioactive and highly toxic.”4
“The size of the uranium aerosols and the solubility of the uranium compounds in the lungs and gut influence the transport of uranium inside the body. Coarse particles are caught in the upper part of the respiratory system (nose, sinuses, and upper part of the lungs) from where they are exhaled or transferred to the throat and then swallowed. Fine particles reach the lower part of the lungs (alveolar region). If the uranium compounds are not easily soluble, the uranium aerosols will tend to remain in the lungs for a longer period of time (up to 16 years), and deliver most of the radiation dose to the lungs. They will gradually dissolve and be transported into the blood stream. For more soluble compounds, uranium is absorbed more quickly from the lungs into the blood stream.”5
… for they know what they are doing
“Terry Jemison at the US Department of Veterans Affairs stated in August 2004 that over 518,000 Gulf-era veterans (14-year period) are now on medical disability, and that 7,039 were wounded on the battlefield in that same period.”6
“DU weapons are very effective kinetic energy penetrators, but even more effective bioweapons since uranium has a strong chemical affinity for phosphate structures concentrated in human DNA.”7
“Many renowned scientists, including those from the US military, have repeatedly stated that there is a link between the use of radioactive ammunition and serious illnesses. Here are just a few examples: The findings of Peter Nowell, founder of the Cancer Research Centre at the University of Pennsylvania, from 1976 state: ‘There is no doubt about the ability of radioactivity to cause cancer and also to promote cancer caused by other carcinogens.’ Dr John W. Gofman, former head of the Plutonium Research Group, issued a stark warning, too: ‘By all reasonable standards derived from scientific findings, there is no safe dose of radioactivity. There is no harmless alpha radiation absorbed by the body. If this is a fact, then any tolerated radiation exposure is tantamount to murder.’ Even the US Army’s Radiobiological Research Institute has admitted, based on the work of Dr Alexandra C. Miller and colleagues, that depleted uranium (DU) can cause cancer. They also found that tiny amounts, too small to be toxic and only weakly radioactive, cause more cytogenetic damage in cells than could be explained by their toxicity or radioactivity alone. Their latest results confirm a report by the British Royal Society, which suggests that the toxicity and radioactivity of DU reinforce each other in an unknown way, to such an extent that eight times more cells than predicted suffer cytogenetic damage. As a result, the carcinogenic and genotoxic health risks of DU have been massively underestimated in current government studies.”8
“The British government and a court of the country recognised as early as 2004 that Gulf War veteran Kenny Duncan was entitled to a higher pension because the illnesses he contracted in the 1991 Gulf War were caused by inhaling depleted uranium.”9 •
1 https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2023-07-03/192006
2 cf e.g. Robert Fisk, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-mystery-of-israel-s-secret-uranium-bomb-6230359.html
3 Frieder Wagner. «Tod bei 5000 Grad». http://www.ag-friedensforschung.de/themen/DU-Geschosse/wagner2.html
4 «Uranwaffen: Das grösste Kriegsverbrechen unserer Zeit». Interview with Frieder Wagner. http://www.ag-friedensforschung.de/themen/DU-Geschosse/wagner.html
5 US Nuclear Regulatory Commission; https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1723/ML17237C001.pdf
6 Leuren Moret. “Depleted uranium is WMD”. In: Battle Creek Enquirer of 9 September 2005 Leuren Moret is a geoscientist and former employee at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, where she became a whistleblower in 1991 after observing fraud in the Yucca Mountain Project. She currently works as an independent scientist and radiation specialist in communities around the world and has contributed to the UN Sub-Commission on Depleted Uranium, among other things.
7 ibd.
8 Frieder Wagner. «Tod bei 5000 Grad». http://www.ag-friedensforschung.de/themen/DU-Geschosse/wagner2.html
9 ibd.
Excerpts from an interview with Frieder Wagner*
Unterdrückte Studien und Beweise
Background: Extensive experience with uranium ammunition has been available for more than thirty years. How can it be that the harmful effects on humans and the environment are still considered unproven or controversial? At least that is the tenor of the [German] federal government and the press.
Frieder Wagner: These “extensive experiences” and studies were carried out by neutral, critical scientists and were not recognised by the established governments or were presented as «unproven» or “controversial”. The WHO studies are a very typical example:
The fact that so-called independent investigations by the WHO are not independent was made clear in February 2004 at a press conference by retired WHO radiation expert Dr Keith Baverstock. In a WHO study in 2001, Baverstock and his co-authors drew attention to the fact that airborne dust containing uranium aerosols, as found in certain places in southern Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in Serbia and Kosovo, is both radioactively harmful and chemically highly toxic. According to Baverstock, the then suppressed WHO study, which was completed in autumn 2001, could have “exerted pressure on the USA and Great Britain and safely curbed the use of uranium weapons”. Baverstock said: “The conclusion of our study is that the widespread use of uranium weapons, for example in Iraq, poses a unique threat to the health of the civilian population. We have growing scientific evidence that the radiological activity and chemical toxicity cause more damage to human cells than we previously thought.”
Hadzici in Bosnia
Why are the actual findings not being public?
Studies and investigations into the harmful effects of uranium ammunition are being deliberately prevented by official bodies today. One of the main reasons for this is to avoid expensive claims for compensation and the corresponding reparation processes. I would like to clarify this point:
In 1995, during the Bosnian war, the small Serbian town of Hadzici, 15 kilometres from Sarajevo, was bombed with GBU 28 uranium bombs. The reason was that the Serbs had a tank repair plant there. At that time, the Serbs suspected that the effects of the uranium bombs used in the region could mean life-threatening radioactive radiation for the inhabitants even after their use, and relocated 3,500 citizens from Hadzici to the distant mountain town of Bratunac. But it was too late, as many of these people had already been contaminated. In the following five years, 1112 of the resettled citizens from Hadzici died from aggressive cancers, while hardly any of the citizens from Bratunac fell ill. The British journalist Robert Fisk therefore rightly wrote in the British daily newspaper «Independent» that «one could have written on the gravestones of these people: ‹Died as a result of radioactive uranium ammunition›. »
Genocide of a different kind
In April 2023, members of the AfD parliamentary group submitted a minor question to the German government on the use of uranium ammunition. In its answer, the German government cites the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations and writes: “... no significant radiation exposure of the population is to be expected.” What do you think of this?
Such an answer would be stupid, brazen and impertinent. I would like to justify it as follows:
When I visited Iraq, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo to film a WDR television documentary in 2003, our equipment naturally included a Geiger counter to warn us of the deadly dangers of these munitions. We saw that the dangers can be deadly when we visited the hospitals in these countries. Even back then, severely deformed babies were born there. Babies without eyes, legs, or arms, babies with their internal organs encased in a sack of skin. All of these creatures lived for only a few hours, suffering excruciating pain. The cause of these deformities and highly aggressive cancers in adults was not the Chernobyl catastrophe, but the use of uranium munitions and bombs by the USA and its allies in past wars, most of which violated international law. This has now been proven by numerous neutral scientists, including some from the USA. In Iraq, women are now refusing to have children because of this. And if they do, they no longer ask after the birth: Is it a boy or a girl? But rather: Is it healthy or deformed?
* “Tabuthema Depleted Uranium – ein Gespräch mit Frieder Wagner” (Taboo on the subject of depleted uranium – an interview with Frieder Wagner). In: Hintergrund of 9 June 2023; https://www.hintergrund.de/globales/kriege/tabuthema-depleted-uranium-ein-gespraech-mit-frieder-wagner/?highlight=Frieder%20Wagner