Our Real Nuclear War

[Kulapavana]

War on Iraq is a Nuclear War

And the fallout is coming this way, says independent scientist Leuren Moret

by Stephanie Hiller

 

 

In May, 2003, the United States dumped 2,200 tons of depleted uranium on Iraq, according to reliable sources, and it's logical to assume that more depleted uranium is being employed in the current attacks on Faluja that began April 8 to put down Iraqi resistance to the American presence there.

 

According to independent geoscientist Leuren Moret, the war on Iraq - like the war on Afghanistan - is a nuclear war. "Depleted uranium is a nuclear weapon and it is a weapon of mass destruction under the U. S. government's definition of weapons of mass destruction," Moret says.

 

The Pentagon has repeatedly denied that DU is harmful, despite the symptoms of half the returning veterans from the first Persian Gulf Wars who are now disabled. But researchers have shown that the Pentagon has been fully aware of the consequences of what is called "low level radiation" since 1942, when depleted uranium was first suggested for development as a military weapon under the Manhattan Project.

 

On Sunday, April 6, the New York Daily News reported that nine soldiers who returned from Iraq last summer had symptoms typical of DU poisoning. The News arranged for them to be tested by Asaf Duracovic, a former colonel in the Army Reserves who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and one of the world's foremost experts on the medical effects of radioactive weaponry. Depleted uranium was found in the urine of four of the men - Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone - the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict

 

Recently completed laboratory analyses show two members of Uranium Medical Research Centre's (UMRC) field investigation team are contaminated with Depleted Uranium (DU). The two field staff, one from Canada and the other, Beirut, toured Iraq for thirteen days in October 2003; five months after the cessation of Operation Iraqi Freedom's aerial bombing and ground force campaign. Using mass spectrometry, UMRC's partner laboratory in Germany measured DU in both team members' urine samples. (Please see http://www.umrc.net/UMRC_bulletin_07_Feb_2004.asp)

 

If short-term visitors and soldiers have been so affected, what of the people, living near bomb sites, breathing the air every day, drinking the water? What of the children who play in these sites and collect pieces of exploded materiel to sell so their families can eat?

 

Using figures developed by Japanese physicist, Professor Yagasaki from the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, and explained in his presentation at the World Conference on Depleted Uranium Weapons held in Hamburg last October, the radioactivity of 2,200 tons (or 440,000 pounds) of depleted uranium together with some 1,000 tons used in Afghanistan, is the atomicity equivalent to 400,000 Nagasaki bombs.

 

Depleted uranium is cheap and plentiful. When uranium is processed for fission bombs or fuel rods for use in power plants, only U-235, about half a percent of the total, is used. Most of what's left over is U-238, so-called "depleted" uranium. The US has over a million tons of the stuff, and storage is becoming a serious problem.

 

Though less radioactive than U-235, DU is still highly radioactive &endash; and chemically toxic as well. "There is no allowable level of risk," says Moret. Nearly twice as dense as lead, DU is used in tanks and airplanes, as well as bullets, handguns, cannons, all the way up to large bombs weighing more than 5,000 pounds.

 

It's not dangerous until it blows up.

 

Depleted uranium is pyrophoric. Relatively innocuous as a metal alloy used in planes, tanks, missiles, bullets and rounds, when depleted uranium burns, it releases a radioactive gas. Larger particles may settle to the ground, but winds blowing across the desert may carry the fine particles to locations in a 1000-mile radius from the explosion. As a result, areas as far west as Egypt and as far east as India are likely to be contaminated. "The U.S. has staged a nuclear war in the Middle East, from Iraq and Central Asia, to the northern half of India. Half of Egypt, Israel, the Saudi Arabian peninsula, Turkey, Iran, the Russian oil-rich states, the Caspian oil region, and northern are now, or will be, all contaminated."

 

Depleted uranium - U-238 - has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. It's effects will be with us forever. It is in the soil, in the groundwater, in food, but the worst of all &endash; it is in the air. When inhaled, it enters directly into the bloodstream. One uranium particle behaves in the body like a tiny nuclear bomb, sending out alpha and beta particles and gamma rays to adjacent cells. These are permanently damaging to the cells and chromosomes and lead to a host of deadly diseases, including cancer and leukemia. They also cause mutations of the genetic material that will show up in subsequent generations as terrible birth deformities, weakened health, and infertility.

 

Moret says the fallout from these foreign wars is headed our way. Spread by powerful desert winds, the fallout will be carried certainly as far as Britain (where dust storms from the Middle East commonly leave residual dust) and then across the Atlantic Ocean. It will also travel across Asia and the Pacific Ocean and be slowly and silently deposited across the North American continent.

 

American citizens have already been exposed to radiation from a variety of sources including malfunctioning nuclear power plants, the disasters at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, aboveground bomb tests conducted from 1957 to 1963, and the enormous existing pile of depleted uranium, about 1 million tons, poorly stored in the United States. Radiation has caused the geometric rise of cancers in the US - 1 in 3 Americans compared to 1 in 20 before the second World War. It is also responsible for the rise in autism, learning disabilities, chronic immune deficiency disorders (chronic fatigue syndrome, Epstein-Barr and so forth), higher rates of infant mortality and the general weakening of the public's health.

 

http://www.awakenedwoman.com/moret_nuclear.htm

 

[theist]

Billions of little bombs eventually add up to one big bomb in destructive effect. Because there is no mushroom cloud it goes largely unnoticed.

Another nuclear war that is currently raging and one many want to increase is the so-called peace time use of nuclear energy. With no way to adequately deal with the waste we are burying it which is like setting massive time bombs for the future peoples of the earth if indeed there are too be any. A nucular war on the future.

 

These generation of earthlings will be cursed by the future generations for tens of thousands of years.

[Guest guest]

And here in Australia the politicians and scientists are seriously considering using this beautiful land as a dumping ground for all the nuclear waste on the planet. Their logic runs something like "Well we're selling uranium to the rest of the world so we are MORALLY responsible to dispose of the waste in pristine Australian soil. Of course for a massive fee that will make Australia extremely wealthy, too bad about being intellectualy bankrupt to start with.

Why oh why do we have to share these brain-dead calls of so called leaders who juggle with the destiny of whole planets, surely there are Demi-gods looking on who can curb their blind idiocy.

[Kulapavana]

Actually, radioactive minerals are quite common in nature, including highly radioactive ones.

 

The biggest risks are not in the storage of nuclear waste, but in the transportation of highly radioactive materials through populated areas.

 

All things considered, nuclear energy production does less environmental damage than the fossil fuel consumption. Especially if we used fissile materials from military sources.

[theist]

The risk is to the future generations. Example how can they guaruntee an earthquake will not split those vaults where the waste is stored? Not reasonably assume, but guauntee.

 

That proposal for Australia is so bonkers it's criminal.

 

Fossil fuels is also madness. It may or may not be worse than nucular but who cares, they are both daft.

 

These are all just more reasons not to hesitate to surrender to Krsna. Kali-yuga acceleration is mind blowing and getting faster.

[Guest guest]

gee the winds blow from west to east...but in this case we get the message, it will get to America soon on the jet stream .

[Kulapavana]

all legitimate long term storage facilities for high level nuclear waste are very deep underground. if the quake damages the vaults the waste has nowhere to go but down, where it is not going to bother anyone.

 

there is much more risk to the public from the current temporary storage facilities for nuclear waste as they are often quite poorly engineered and maintained.

 

as to clouds of radioactive dust from storage facilities drifting across oceans that is impossible.

[Guest guest]

how do you store the active waste from explosions or testing of nuclear weapons ?

 

your telling us that the stuff floating around after a bommbing is not of concern...

 

where do you live in a bunker somewhere ???

[Kulapavana]

I thought we were talking about the issue of nuclear waste storage.