Depleted Dirty Bombers

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff10272009.html
October 27, 2009
Pentagon Dirty Bombers By DAVE LINDORFF

T he
Nuclear Regulator Commission is considering an application by the US
Army for a permit to have depleted uranium at its Pohakuloa Training
Area, a vast stretch of flat land in what’s called the “saddle” between
the sacred mountains of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island,
and at the Schofield Barracks on the island of Oahu. In fact, what the
Army is asking for is a permit to leave in place the DU left over from
years of test firing of M101 mortar “spotting rounds,” that each
contained close to half a pound of depleted uranium (DU). The Army,
which originally denied that any DU weapons had been used at either
location, now says that as many as 2000 rounds of M101 DU mortars might
have been fired at Pohakuloa alone.

But that’s only a small part of the story.

The Army is actually seeking a master permit from the NRC to cover all
the sites where it has fired DU weapons, including penetrator shells
that, unlike the M101, are designed to hit targets and burn on impact,
turning the DU in the warhead into a fine dust of uranium oxide.
Hearings on this proposal were held in Hawaii on Aug. 26 and 27.

Uranium particles, whether pure uranium or in an oxidized form, are
alpha emitters, and can be highly carcinogenic and mutagenic if
ingested or inhaled, since they can lodge in one part of the body­the
kidney or lung or gonad, for example­and then irradiate surrounding
cells with large, destructive alpha particles (actually helium atoms),
until some gene is compromised and a cell become malignant.

Among the sites identified by the NRC as being contaminated with DU are:

Ft. Hood, TX

Ft. Benning, GA

Ft. Campbell, KY

Ft. Knox, KY

Ft. Lewis, WA

Ft. Riley, KS

Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD

Ft. Dix, NJ

Makua Military Reservation, HI

Other locations identified as having DU weapons contamination are:

China Lake Air Warfare Center, CA

Eglin AFB, Florida,

Nellis AFB, NV

Davis-Monthan AFB

Kirtland AFB, NM

White Sands Missile Range, NM

Ethan Allen Firing Range, VT

New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

An
application for a 99-year permit to test DU weapons at the NM Inst. Of
Mining and Technology claimed that that site’s test area was “so
contaminated with DU…as to preclude any other use”!

DU weapons have also been used by the Navy at Vieques Island off Puerto Rico (the Navy claimed it was a “mistake.”

The Pentagon continues a long history of claiming that DU--which is the
uranium that is left after the fissionable isotope U-235 is removed to
make nuclear fuel and bombs--is not dangerous, although this official
stance is belied by the warnings it has given to its troops (though not
to civilians in battle zones), to stay well clear of tanks and other
equipment destroyed by US tanks, which used DU weapons as the ordnance
of choice in both the Gulf War and the current Iraq War. During both
wars, DU ammunition was used by Army and Marine tanks, by the Bradley
Fighting Vehicle, the A-10 ground support jet, the Marine Harrier jet,
and specially equipped F16 fighter jets. The Navy also switched from DU
ammunition to tungsten ammunition in its Phalanx anti-missile ship
defense system because of health and environmental concerns with the DU
ammo.

In both wars, a high percentage of troops have returned
with many physical ailments--auto-immune problems, cancers, and later,
birth defects in offspring--which have been referred to as Gulf War and
now Iraq War Syndrome. As many as a quarter of returning vets from the
Gulf War have reported strange illnesses and cancers and the numbers
are rising for Iraq War vets. As well, statistics from the National
Institutes of Health show that counties hosting bases and test
facilities where DU has been uses also show high cancer rates. This is
certainly true for Hawaii's Big Island, which has the highest cancer
rates for the Hawaiian archepelago. Meanwhile, the lung cancer rate for
the Ft. Knox area is 105-127 per 100,000 for the 2001-2005 period, high
by state and national standards. The rate is among the highest in the
state of Washington for Pierce County, where Ft. Lewis is located.

The Pentagon denies that it uses depleted uranium in bombs, missiles
and cruise missile warheads, but military personnel have reported their
use in all three delivery systems, and reports exist of DU
bunker-buster bombs, DU-tipped penetrator warheads on Tomahawk cruise
missiles and on some air-to-ground missiles.

It’s a good bet that all US munitions containing DU have been widely tested at various US military bases and testing grounds.

The bottom line is that at the same time that US government is
continuing to warn about the danger of terrorists acquiring the
materials to make a “dirty” bomb that could spread radioactive material
in the US, the US military has for years been doing exactly that, and
continues to do so, with no intention to clean up its messes, many of
which are allowing depleted uranium to percolate into ground water or
flow down streams to more populated areas.

Of course, it could
have been worse. The M101 mortar shells that litters Pohakuloa were
actually designed to serve as a range-finders for the Davy Crocket
mortar, which back in the late 1950s and the 1960s, and up until 1971
was designed to allow infantry troops to fire a small “tactical”
nuclear mortar shell at targets just one to two miles distant. Some 700
of these 57-lb. “little nukes”, which had a power of “just” several
kilotons or less, were developed and actually made their way into the
arsenals of troops in Europe and elsewhere during the Cold War.
Fortunately there are no reports of any of them having been fired off
at any of the military’s firing ranges, although the test detonation of
one in Nevada at an elevation of 40 feet above ground was the last case
of open-air testing before JFK’s open-air test moratorium went into
effect--especially given that their radiation ipact radius was larger
than their firing range, meaning that launching one was by definition
an automatic suicide mission.

Then again, the Pentagon
doesn’t exactly have a sterling record about telling the truth where
nuclear weapons and DU weapons are concerned. (You start to notice as
you look into this stuff that with uranium weapons, the military's
attitude towards troop safety is not a whole lot better than its
attitude towards the people at the downrange end of the line.)

Nor is the NRC to be relied on to protect the American public. As an
administrative judge wrote in a ruling on a case involving DU
contamination at Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana, the NRC exhibited
a “more than casual attitude with regard to decommissioning of sites on
which radioactive materials remain as a potential threat to public
health and safety and to the environment.”

In another case,
involving cleanup of the ShieldAlloy Metallurgical Corp.’s site in
Newfield, NJ, where DU weapons were made, a judge said, “at the very
least, the (NRC) staff has countenanced…a situation that will leave the
citizens in the area surrounding the activity site in doubt for close
to two decades regarding what measures will ultimately be taken for
their protection.”

Dave Lindorff  is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “ The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). He can be reached at dlindorff@mindspring.com

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