HW 31: Responding to Riverbend

In the reading for this week, I became very interested in learning about "Depleted Uranium."Riverbend speaks about uranium as something that is in many Iraq households. It has been proven to have a large effect on the environment and has been proven to have an effect on the rate of cancer increasing. Riverbend talks about how babies are being born with one eye, three legs, or no face at all. After looking up more information on it, I found that it is weakly radioactive and an external radiation dose from depleted uranium is about 60% of that from the same mass of uranium with a natural isotopic ratio. Depleted uranium, commonly known as DU is “uranium remaining after removal of the isotope uranium-235 (wikipedia.com). DU is considered both a toxic and radioactive hazard that requires long term storage as low level nuclear waste. Originally, DU was conserved in the hope that more efficient enrichment techniques would allow further extraction of the fissile isotope; however, those hopes have not materialized. It is often used in the military for defensive armor plate and other applications. Depleted uranium is also used as a tamper in fission bombs and as a nuclear fuel in hydrogen bombs. After researching information on depleted uranium, I definately have a better understanding as to what Riverbend has been talking about all along. Th elink to this site is, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium.