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Comment by jostmey | Hacker News Reader

Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But hydrogen bombs, developed years later, are far worse. Check out the size of the radioactive fallout cloud in the graphic halfway through this article ( https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/known-unknowns-th... ). People would be dying from acute exposure as far as 100 miles away from the radioactive fallout

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Unfortunately, military use of radioactive elements doesn't stop at bombs. Today's use of depleted uranium - because of its elusiveness - is in some sense worse than the use of atomic/hydrogen bombs. (BTW, only USA uses DU!)

People of Iraq, Libya, Serbia (including Kosovo and Metohija), Bosnia, Afghanistan, Syria (and neighboring countries) but also soldiers that were/are part of the occupational force there are sick and dying of cancer and leukemia.

"BTW, only USA uses DU!"

Not true at all. Both Russia and the UK use depleted uranium in their main armor piercing rounds.

"Uses" and "owns" are two different verbs. Around 20 countries own DU ammo. But, US is the only one that uses it.

Pretending that this is anything but a spurious distinction in this case, you're still wrong as the UK has absolutely admitted to using depleted uranium rounds in combat.[1] If you believe that Russia has not used depleted uranium (and why should you?) it is not because of any humanitarian concerns because they absolutely have used tungsten rounds in combat and tungsten is also a toxic and carcinogenic metal and prone to the same kind of particulate contamination you claim about depleted uranium.[2]

1. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/depleted-uranium-... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten#Health_factors

What? Depleted Uranium is less radioactive than unprocessed Uranium. It's used because it's really, really dense. I'd be comfortable using flatware made out of the stuff.

I'd be comfortable using flatware made out of the stuff.

The main health concerns aren't due to the fact that DU is highly radioactive in itself, but that tiny DU 'dust' particles break of from the munitions on impact and inhaling these particles can be very dangerous.

There is also some evidence that long term exposure to DU can lead birth defects and potentially other health problems, but the causality is very difficult to tease out.

So while I agree that DU isn't used because it is radioactive, that doesn't change the fact that it does potentially cause serious health issues.

I mean, sure, in the long term. But there is a long, long list of stuff that the military uses that I'm more worried about than DU. It's essentially like Tungsten, Lead, or Mercury.

The problem more or less unique to DU munitions is that it gives off tiny aerosol particles when it hits its target which can contaminate a large area and are very easy to breathe in for a long time afterwards. And breathing in these particles are linked to an increasing number of health issues.

Armor-piercing projectiles that are enhanced with DU form an aerosol of Uranium oxides when hitting their target. This aerosol can contaminate large areas and is inhaled by military people and later by civilians, for instance by kids that play in abandoned tanks that were hit with such DU-enhanced projectiles. Since DU is an alpha emitter with a long half-life, it is dangerous to have it in your body, even when the radioactivity is comparably low. As a heavy metal, it will stay in your body pretty much forever, and there's the chemical toxicity as well. The long-term effects of inhaling Uranium oxides are heavily debated, as it will take usually many years for an illness to develop, and it is almost impossible to link a certain illness to DU with high certainty.

> I'd be comfortable using flatware made out of the stuff.

I would strongly advise against that. DU (Depleted Uranium) is not (very) radioactive, but it is still extremely toxic (as toxic as unprocessed Uranium, IIRC), and also carcinogenic.

If you ate off of it, you would become very sick, very quickly.

So, DON'T.

It's not radioactive but it is a toxic metal and can be dangerous for the same reason that lead, mercury, etc are.

In what sense is it worse than nuclear bombs?

The post might be a little hyperbolic (I'm not the poster), but uranium oxide is fairly dangerous. Though you won't get radiation poisoning from it, it is extremely dense and the dust is very dangerous. It is toxic for inhalation and ingestion, like all heavy metals.

Here's the SDS sheet [1] on it that goes into more detail.

[1] https://science.energy.gov/~/media/nbl/pdf/price-lists/SDS/S...

Seems like a lot hyperbolic to me. I know which one I’d rather be a mile away from when it’s used, or have contaminating the landscape afterwards.

I definitely wouldn't call it worse than nuclear, because you're right. I'd rather be near depleted uranium than a nuclear blast, especially with current nuclear weapons. And not to mention the side effects of nuclear attacks.

One argument is that since it's officially 'safe' to use them, they're used liberally without any concern for the effect they will have one health of the people living in the area. At least with nukes people know to be very very careful with regards to using them.

By that logic, everything that currently kills people is worse than nuclear weapons, including cars, sharks, baseball bats, and ice cream.

It could only be argued to be worse in the sense that it has been used more often (and that it can be used rather more quietly).

It's weird that the products of the U235 chain reaction seem noticably less horrible than what you get when you forcibly split U238 with a fast neutron from hydrogen fusion. It seems like you get way worse fallout from an H-bomb than from an A-bomb even accounting for yield. Unless you do what the Soviets did in the Tsar Bomba test and replace the U238 with lead.

Came here to say this. The article is misleading. The bombs in existence today are several orders of magnitude more deadly than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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