So I ask... where is the outrage for the civillian uses of DU son?
Light it on fire and what are the results?
Why should I look up spent nuclear rods instead of DU? Aren't we talking about the application of DU.
Please refrain from moving the goal posts.
Because DU is spent fuel rods??? Sound like a good reason?
Spent nuclear fuel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Uranium
96% of the mass is the remaining uranium: most of the original
238U and a little
235U. Usually
235U would be less than 0.83% of the mass along with 0.4%
236U.
Reprocessed uranium will contain
236U, which is not found in nature; this is one isotope which can be used as a
fingerprint for spent reactor fuel.
If using a thorium fuel to produce fissile U-233, the SNF will have U-233, with a half-life of 159,200 years. This will have an impact on the long-term
radioactive decay of the spent fuel. If compared with
MOX fuel, the activity around one million years in the cycles with thorium will be higher due to the presence of the not fully decayed U-233.
Reprocessed uranium
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Reprocessed uranium (RepU) is the
uranium recovered from
nuclear reprocessing, as done commercially in France, the UK and Japan and by nuclear weapons states' military plutonium production programs. This uranium actually makes up the bulk of the material separated during reprocessing. Commercial
LWR spent nuclear fuel contains on average (excluding
cladding) only four percent
plutonium,
minor actinides and
fission products by weight.
Reuse of reprocessed uranium has not been common because of low prices in the
uranium market of recent decades, and because of the undesirable isotopic contaminants
In the last few years uranium prices have risen again, and if the price becomes high enough, it is possible that reprocessed uranium will be re-
enriched and reused. A higher enrichment level will be required to compensate for the
236U which is lighter than
238U and therefore will concentrate in the enriched product.
[2] Also, if
fast breeder reactors ever come into commercial use, reprocessed uranium, like
depleted uranium, will be usable in their breeding blankets.
There have been some studies involving the use of reprocessed uranium in
CANDU reactors. CANDU is designed to use natural uranium as fuel; the U-235 content remaining in spent PWR/BWR fuel is typically greater than that found in natural uranium, allowing the re-enrichment step to be skipped. Fuel cycle tests also have included the DUPIC (Direct Use of spent PWR fuel In CANDU) fuel cycle, where used fuel from a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) is packaged into a CANDU fuel bundle with only physical reprocessing (cut into pieces) but no chemical reprocessing.
[3]
Depleted uranium (DU) is
uranium primarily composed of the
isotope uranium-238 (U-238). Natural uranium is about 99.27 percent U-238, 0.72 percent
U-235, and 0.0055 percent
U-234. U-235 is used for
fission in
nuclear reactors and
nuclear weapons. Uranium is
enriched in U-235 by separating the isotopes by
mass. The byproduct of enrichment, called depleted uranium or DU, contains less than one third as much U-235 and U-234 as natural uranium. The external radiation dose from DU is about 60 percent of that from the same
mass of natural uranium.
[2] DU is also found in
reprocessed spent nuclear reactor fuel, but that kind can be distinguished from DU produced as a byproduct of uranium enrichment by the presence of
U-236.
[3] In the past, DU has been called
Q-metal,
depletalloy, and
D-38.
DU is useful because of its very high
density of 19.1
g/
cm3. Civilian uses include counterweights in aircraft, radiation shielding in medical
radiation therapy and industrial
radiography equipment, and containers used to transport radioactive materials. Military uses include defensive armor plating and
armor-piercing projectiles.
The use of DU in
munitions is controversial because of questions about potential long-term health effects.
[4][5] Normal functioning of the
kidney,
brain,
liver,
heart, and numerous other systems can be affected by uranium exposure, because uranium is a
toxic metal.
[6] It is weakly radioactive and remains so because of its long
physical half-life (4.468 billion years for
uranium-238). The
biological half-life (the average time it takes for the human body to eliminate half the amount in the body) for uranium is about 15 days.
[7] The aerosol produced during impact and combustion of depleted uranium munitions can potentially contaminate wide areas around the impact sites leading to possible inhalation by human beings.
[8] During a three week period of conflict in 2003 in
Iraq, 1,000 to 2,000 tonnes of DU munitions were used.
[9]
The actual acute and chronic toxicity of DU is also a point of medical controversy. Multiple studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents suggest the possibility of
leukemogenic,
genetic,
reproductive, and
neurological effects from chronic exposure.
[4] A 2005
epidemiology review concluded: "In aggregate the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to DU."
[10] The
World Health Organization, the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations which is responsible for setting health research norms and standards, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends,
[11] states that no risk of reproductive, developmental, or carcinogenic effects have been reported in humans due to DU exposure.
[12][13] This report has been criticized by Dr. Keith Baverstock for not including possible long term effects of DU on human body.
[14]
