here is his essay from the email he sent..something is killing our troops and causing birth defects..but corollation never proves cause and effect..read this..
http://www.ntanet.net/traprock.html
and here is another, linked from the same yahoo group also in support..
~snip~
The claims about DU have resurfaced regularly about once every five years or so: they first cropped up after Desert Shield/Desert Storm in the early 1990s, and again during the fighting in Kosovo in the mid-nineties. Fielding of some new weapons systems and closure of bases in Germany and Stateside seemed to have revived interest in them as the Y2K furor settled down; now, after nearly three years in Iraq occupation and four in Afghanistan, we once more hear about how the US government is poisoning our own troops and contaminating generations of Afghani peasants and herders and Iraqi Marsh Arabs and farmers.
Because Uranium is associated with, (gasp!) nuclear bombs (see: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Nuclear Winter, End of Civilization, panic, hyper-screaming hysteria, etc.) and (double gasp!) nuclear reactors (see: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Los Alamos, deep-fried crispy babies, etc.), most people are irrational and have a superstitious fear of the stuff. This sadly seems to be especially true of liberal arts majors and juris “doctors” (i.e., lawyers).
To understand the claims and get past the hysteria and gossip, we need a very basic chemistry and physics lesson. Many years ago, back in the early 1990s, in fact, after the ’91 Gulf War, I did some research about DU. Here are some basic facts about this material:
Uranium, like other elements, has several different isotopes, six to be exact, and not all of them are radioactive. In fact, the most common, U-238, is NOT radioactive. For nuclear work, the desired isotopes are the radioactive ones, particularly U-233 and U-235. The ratio of U-235 to U238 in natural uranium is 1 atom of U-235 to 140 atoms of U-238.
Yes, uranium is a naturally-occurring element, found all over the world but like most metals, found in more concentrated form (ore bodies or veins) in just a few places. Also like most metals, it is not found free (in pure form) in nature, but in compounds with oxygen and other elements. In the US, that includes the well-known pitchblende ores of North Carolina, Colorado, Utah, and South Dakota, but also includes phosphate deposits in Florida and other Gulf Coast states. The ore must be processed to obtain the metal, or a workable compound (like uranium hexafluoride or tetrafluoride), then the uranium is “enriched” to capture and use the U-235 and U-233 in as pure a form as possible, for use in nuclear reactors or nuclear explosives.
“Depleted Uranium” is so called because it is what remains after the more useable (and radioactive) isotopes of uranium are removed in the enrichment process. DU is far less radioactive than normal, natural uranium ores, and emits primarily alpha and beta, not the more penetrating gamma rays. The only reason it is radioactive at all (and at a level comparable to lead or other heavy metals) is because the enrichment process is not 100% efficient. However, the percentage of radioactive atoms of uranium (and related metals) is reduced from about 1% to about 0.01%, a factor of 100 times less.
DU is not just used for military applications: it also has many civilian applications, especially as aircraft and ship counterweights, and ironically, as radiation shields in medical radiation therapy machines. Uranium itself, whether depleted or not, has many commercial and artistic uses, including being used as a pigment in ceramics and glass (very pretty glass, too) and (fine-art) paints. It is also alloyed with iron to make ferrouranium, which is very useful in making special steels, and is an industrially-useful deoxidizer and denitrogenizer.
DU is useful in many of these applications for very good reasons: it is very dense (heavy for its volume), easily worked (much like iron), and for use in shells, will burst into flame under the right (i.e., high enough temperature and pressure) conditions, creating still hotter conditions. (You don’t have to worry about that pretty uranium-yellow glass suddenly bursting into flame or melting down on its own, any more than you have to worry about being made sterile by it (unless the broken edge of the glass is used to do nasty things to your body).
DU, like all uranium and most heavy elements (such as lead), IS chemically toxic, but is also rapidly excreted (98% within days) if ingested or inhaled. The only people in which urine levels remained high even after massive exposure were those who actually had fragments embedded in their bodies, and even in those cases, the various symptoms claimed were very rare. The major impacts are to the kidneys (as with any heavy metal) and for inhaled DU, the lungs (again, similar to any heavy metal or silica).
~snip~
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/06/03/13/nathan.htm
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