MetaFilter posts tagged with uranium

That's just normal oxidation.

exogenous — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:52:23 -0800

Removing 600 kilos of enriched U-235: the story of how, in 1994, the United States secretly removed from Kazakhstan enough purified uranium to make 24 nuclear weapons. (Full article with one photo.) Russian bomb-grade uranium is now being used in U.S. power plants.

Get a Glow on Tonight

Xurando — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:47:01 -0800

Earlier this week this story about illegal uranium sales was in the news. Had they been thinking they could have ordered online here and here. BTW, check out what else customers are buying.

Kerr Magee had applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to call their waste an "experimental fertilizer" and just spread it over the top of the land.

mek — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 00:59:35 -0800

Depleted uranium is now understood to have many medical consequences unique to its modern application as munitions, due to its incendiary, aerosolizing behavior when pulverized. (Rosalie Bertell explains, youtube) It has become a leading candidate for the cause of Gulf War syndrome, and was associated with massive increases in cancer and birth defects in Basra. The EU has called for a moratorium on its use four times, and WHO is deeply concerned with its consequences, but the USA (with Canadian complicity) and Russia continue to use it in Iraq and elsewhere. (prev: 1 2 3 4 5)

Slavery in Burma

homunculus — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 18:07:57 -0800

From Hunter to Hunted "In his quest to free slaves around the world, Aaron Cohen thought he’d seen it all. Then he went to Myanmar."

Enriched uranium unearthed from man's garden

yoyo_nyc — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 17:49:38 -0800

Enriched uranium unearthed from man's garden A German man obtained and buried it in his garden, raising concerns about the security of Germany's nuclear reactors. The German version of the article is more funny, since he explains how he tried to convince the authorities for 15 years that he had enriched uranium in his garden...

Leetso

homunculus — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 01:27:31 -0800

Blighted Homeland. "From 1944 to 1986, 3.9 million tons of uranium ore were dug and blasted from Navajo soil, nearly all of it for America's atomic arsenal. Navajos inhaled radioactive dust, drank contaminated water and built homes using rock from the mines and mills. Many of the dangers persist to this day." A series of articles and photo galleries examines the legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo (previously discussed here.) [Via Gristmill, BugMeNot.]

"A Classic Psy-Ops Campaign"

homunculus — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 19:47:09 -0800

The War They Wanted, The Lies They Needed. "The Bush administration invaded Iraq claiming Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger. As much of Washington knew, and the world soon learned, the charge was false. Worse, it appears to have been the cornerstone of a highly successful 'black propaganda' campaign with links to the White House." (Via Sic Semper Tyrannis.)

Punks, Politicos and Scientists of The World Unite!

usedwigs — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 09:08:49 -0800

Punks, Politicos and Scientists of The World Unite! Depleted Uranium Bill passes the house. To pass the bill, Dr. McDermott took a less traditional route, working with bands like Anti-Flag and speaking to people outside the political sphere.

Second verse, same as the first!

EarBucket — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 10:56:25 -0800

~~Niger~~ Venezuela is planning to sell uranium to ~~Iraq~~ Iran.

Conspiracy theory sans tinfoil

warbaby — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 07:58:53 -0800

Robert Parry disentangles the Plame game. He uncovered the Contra/Cocaine story. Now he's got a very sensible hypothesis on Plame. Lots more good stuff at Consortium News.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Specklet — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 13:04:31 -0800

I know this has been on everyone's mind, but I just read this article today and was astounded at my lack of foresight. Silly me, here I was worrying about global warming when what I need to be fretting about is the decrease in fuel's impact on the structure of international banking! Will we run out of fossil fuel before it's too late to save the environment from pollution and greenhouse gasses? The abiotic nuts think we've got plenty more. Personally, I think we can kiss the marvel that is suburbia goodbye and start contemplating the fact that the focus on the post-post industrial revolution will not be information, but rather agriculture. And since solar panels and windmills and the like are made of materials that are extracted, transported, and fashioned by using oil-powered machinery, my money's on the folks who're stockpiling uranium for all those shiny new nuclear plants we're going to need. So, do we have a plan? You bet we do! Oh. Well, we'll just rely on the advancement of technology to allow us to weasel out of it! Me? I've actually always wanted a horse.

Beating Fermi by 1.7 billion years

blahblahblah — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 14:45:27 -0800

The site of the world's first nuclear reactor? Gabon. About 1.7 billion years ago several deposits of uranium in Oklo, Gabon spontaneously began to undergo nuclear chain reactions fed by small drips of water. These natural breeder reactors ran for almost a million years, producing both intense heat and plutonium byproducts. Aside from the strangeness of naturally occurring reactors, Oklo provides the only existing case of how highly radioactive waste behaves over a period of tens of millions of years -- exactly the problem faced by the DOE's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site.

Gas masks, get your gas masks here...

dejah420 — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 14:23:12 -0800

That American forces use depleted uranium in our weapons isn't news, but these statistic are a little spooky. According to Bob Nichols at the Dissident Voice, we've unleased 4,000,000 pounds of DU in Iraq. That's the radioactive equivalent of 250,000 Nagasaki bombs (pdf) says Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, former chief of Naval Staff in India. And since it's dust...it travels with the wind, which means Europe will see some fallout. It also turns out that most of the soldiers didn't know they were using DU, didn't know what DU was, and are now suffering reactions to it.

The USA's WMDs and Their Deadly Fallout

fold_and_mutilate — Mon, 18 Aug 2003 20:34:12 -0800

"The depleted uranium being used in the Middle East is a repeat of the deception of Navajos, the abuse of the innocent. 'The United States government knew all along the uranium mining would kill Navajos....' said Badoni, among Navajos organizing opposition to further uranium mining on the Navajo Nation....declassified documents in the United States reveal that both the buyer, the United States government, and Ottawa, then the world's largest supplier, withheld information from Native miners that could have saved their health and their lives."

The ongoing, deadly fallout in a certain nation where development (and use) of weapons of mass destruction has never been in doubt.

redirecting

the fire you left me — Fri, 18 Jul 2003 06:34:42 -0800

The jig is up. Robert Jospeh, a top aide to Bush national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, worked with Dick Checny's office and "insisted" the uranium intel be included in Bush's State of the Union speech.

The harder they come, the harder they fall

Ignatius J. Reilly — Sat, 12 Jul 2003 09:52:58 -0800

Tenet Had to be Pushed to Take Responsibility. George W. Bush may believe that the yellowcake controversy is over, but the underlings of the fall guy Tenet in the CIA are already starting to sing. The administration have gone out of the way to stress that they still trust the CIA, despite the brewing scandal. So maybe we should all pay attention to these leaks?

is tenet the fall guy?

specialk420 — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:36:39 -0800

is george george tenet the administrations fall guy on niger/uranium issue? should he be? and where does our vice president fit into the puzzle?

Operation Enduring Uranium

Bletch — Sun, 29 Jun 2003 16:14:35 -0800

Bizarre results showing elevated levels of NON-depleted uranium in Afghan civilians who showed symptoms of uranium poisoning following Operation Enduring Freedom. "Uranium levels found in the Afghan civilians’ urine are 4-20 times higher than those of a control group and the isotopic signature is that of Non-Depleted Uranium. The only explanations of this finding are either anomalous geological and agricultural conditions (fertilizers) or the presence of uranium extracted from the front-end of the fuel or weapons production cycles. [...] There are no geological, commercial and agricultural phenomena or activities and uses in the environs of the contaminated populations that might explain the contamination." This is very odd. [via wrh; these preliminary results are unpublished but UMRC’s Gulf War Veterans’ studies are in peer-reviewed journals]

Holy Heavy METAfilter poisoning Batman!

KidnapCounty — Wed, 04 Jun 2003 23:13:22 -0800

Not as easy to understand as those self-install satellite dishes The video the army remembered to forget? Just like he Treasury Department's amnesia regarding Hemp for Victory.

xowie — Sat, 12 Oct 2002 06:23:03 -0800

Medical consequences of attacking Iraq. In a brief, but vivid, editorial, pediatrician and anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott decries the use of U-238 (aka "depleted uranium") weapons. (via boing boing)

Mick — Sat, 28 Sep 2002 08:35:36 -0800

Turkish Police Seize 33lbs of Weapons-Grade Uranium. The destination of the Uranium is still under investigation but it was seized 155 miles from the Iraqi border.

Mr. skullhead — Tue, 09 Jan 2001 17:00:29 -0800

NATO Ducks Uranium Ban Amid Clamor for Research.

NATO partners split on dangers of depleted uranium weapons.

"U.S. attack jets fired some 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition during NATO's 1999 campaign to end Serb repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. About 10,000 rounds were also fired in neighboring Bosnia in 1994-95."

Of course, this doesn't count rounds used during the Gulf War.

bliss322 — Sun, 07 Jan 2001 20:01:45 -0800

left-over gun shells poisoning the environment US and NATO forces left enough low-level depleted uranium shells lying around in bosnia/kosovo to cause an environmental hazard. I wrote whitehouse.gov and the d.o.d. about how important i think it is that we clean up this mess, pronto. i love using the word, pronto. this is important, and could really affect us if we don't fix it now.

Sean Meade — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 06:58:50 -0800

'Gulf War Syndrome' cause? An interesting potential link (via thewebtoday).