FWD: DEPLETED URANIUM IN BUNKER BOMBS

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy
A-and do you all know why this stuff is used, and has been used for
many decades, in armor piercing munitions? It adds mass to the shell,
allowing it to blow a hole through the armor shell of the tank or
bunker in question. The kinetic energy of an armor-piercing shell is,
in the instant of impact, converted largely to heat which
melts/vaporizes a hole through the target, clean as a punch. The molten
steel of the target, along with material from the munition, bursts into
the shell of the tank or bunker and incinerates everything inside, and
secondarily igniting any fuel or explosives that may be stored within.
The depleted uranium is the most massive element available and helps
the armor (or bunker) piercing shell to deliver this kinetic energy
efficiently to a small point.

The "depleted" uranium is radioactive, but the fissile isotope (is it
the U-238 or U-235? I can't remember...) and intensely poisonous
plutonium have been removed.

FWIW,
Mark

--- KXX4493553 at aol.com wrote:
> DEPLETED URANIUM IN BUNKER BOMBS
> 
> America's big dirty secret
> 
> by ROBERT JAMES PARSONS
> 
>      The United States loudly and proudly boasted this month
>      of its new bomb currently being used against al-Qaida
>      hold-outs in Afghanistan; it sucks the air from
>      underground installations, suffocating those within. The
>      US has also admitted that it has used depleted uranium
>      weaponry over the last decade against bunkers in Iraq,
>      Kosovo, and now Afghanistan.
> 
>                     Translated by the author
> 
>        <http://MondeDiplo.com/2002/03/03uranium>
> 
> kwp
> 


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