US soldiers are sick of it

Amer­i­can sol­diers also are begin­ning to suf­fer injuries from a silent and per­ni­cious weapon mate­r­i­al of U.S. origin—depleted ura­ni­um. The Depart­ment of Defense says deplet­ed ura­ni­um is pow­er­ful and safe, and not that wor­ri­some.

A shell coat­ed with deplet­ed ura­ni­um pierces a tank like a hot knife through but­ter, explod­ing on impact into a char­ring infer­no. As tank armor, it repels artillery assaults. It also leaves behind a fine radioac­tive dust with a half-life of 4.5 bil­lion years.

Deplet­ed ura­ni­um is the garbage left from pro­duc­ing enriched ura­ni­um for nuclear weapons and ener­gy plants. It is 60 per­cent as radioac­tive as nat­ur­al ura­ni­um. The Unit­ed States has an esti­mat­ed 1.5 bil­lion pounds of it, sit­ting in haz­ardous waste stor­age sites across the coun­try. Mean­ing it is plen­ti­ful and cheap as well as high­ly effec­tive.

[…] “The Depart­ment of Defense takes the posi­tion that you can eat it for break­fast and it pos­es no threat at all,” said Steve Robin­son of the Nation­al Gulf War Resource Cen­ter, which helps vet­er­ans with var­i­ous prob­lems, includ­ing nav­i­gat­ing the labyrinth of VA health care. “Then you have far-left groups that … declare it a crime against human­i­ty.”