But when DU smashes at twice the speed of sound against metal, it burns and pulverizes, becomes toxic and releases radioactive dust that can soar in the heat column of a flaming tank and waft for miles in the desert wind.Īs a heavy metal, DU’s short-term risk is chemical toxicity.

When protectively encased, DU’s health risks are small. Radiation occurs almost everywhere, at low levels known as “background.” DU, however, is a highly concentrated form, consisting of the “tailings” left over from the enrichment process that produces nuclear fuel and bombs. Unaware of the potential risks, falconers hunt along a side road and two men scour the ground for mushrooms.Īlthough the Pentagon has issued contradictory statements about the dangers posed by the 320 tons of DU fired in Iraq, it predicts that every future battlefield - including in the former Yugoslavia, where DU is now being used by US forces - will be contaminated with DU.

Pentagon figures indicate that at least 860,000 DU rounds were fired, leaving behind a trail of radioactive toxic jetsam that will remain contaminated for 4.5 billion years, a time span comparable to the age of our solar system. The favored bullet of American tank gunners and pilots was the armor-piercing DU “penetrator,” first used in combat in the Gulf war because of its remarkable density - not its radioactivity.

The guards confine themselves to one small building, avoiding wreckage contaminated by US bullets made of depleted uranium (DU).ĭriving into the former battlefield, one passes Iraq’s rich Rumeila oil fields and the demilitarized zone with Kuwait, which is littered with rusting tanks and vehicles. Parts of this facility, destroyed by American air raids during the 1991 Gulf war, remain “hot” - radioactive. The men guarding the ruins of the remote Kharanj oil pumping station near Iraq’s border with Saudi Arabia don’t wander around much.

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