RADIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS IN AREAS OF KUWAIT WITH RESIDUES OF DEPLETED URANIUM
Report by an international group of experts
Still having a look at this one. Interesting admission on page 7, implies that
dirty DU has been put toward armaments for longer than I (in my innocence) would
have guessed.
"There have been reports that the DU in munitions contains
small
amounts of other radionuclides, such as isotopes of
americium and
plutonium, as well as 236U. The presence of these
human-made radionuclides
indicates that some of the DU has been obtained from
uranium that had been
irradiated in nuclear reactors and subsequently
reprocessed.
Published information for other theatres of war indicates
that
the amounts of these radionuclides present in DU are very
small
[8, 9].
[8] ROYAL SOCIETY, The Health Hazards of Depleted Uranium
Munitions, Part I, Royal Society, London (2001).
[9] UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME, Depleted Uranium
in Kosovo, Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment, UNEP,
Nairobi (2001). Radiological Assessments, Rep. NRPB-M636,
National Radiological Protection Board, Didcot, UK (1996).
The ratios of Pu238 toPU239&240, and U234:U238 given in
Table II, on Page 8, should help when drawing inferences
about the population dose commitment associated with DU
weapons and remnants of war.
