[rubs temples] Do I need to explain depleted uranium again? I don’t wanna explain depleted uranium again. Dammit @dankaszeta.bsky.social
The primary bit is covered in the first section of this rant which Cheryl Rofer strongly encouraged me to write.
Depleted Uranium, dep-U or DU in comman shorthand, is the remainder after natural uranium has been purified down to ONLY uranium and then isotopically separated to remove as much of the fissile U-233 and U-235 as possible. What remains is almost, but not quite, pure U-238. Radiologically, it’s kind of uninteresting. Because of the rather long half life of U-238, DU is primarily an alpha emitter with a slowly growing beta emission signal and ignorable very low energy gamma. The specific activity [Bq/kg, for you unitary analysis nerd] is such that the necessary quantity to receive lethal doses is measured in train cars. It’s not an external dose concern and while it is poor ALARA practice to have internal uptake of any alpha emitters, even low specific activity ones like DU, you are hard pressed to consume enough to be a radiological problem [SEE ALSO: train cars]. DU helps you think about what you’d do if your were working with a much more serious and lethal radionucleide.
What DU is really for, in my professional opinion, is to see if you can take moment to stop panicking about a meter that clicks to consider what other hazards are present. The much more immediately hazardous ones. As I regularly teach students and first responders, the key is Latency. Increasing ionizing radiation dose is gambling in the Cancer Casino, but unless we’re talking about Acute Radiation Sickness (ARS), you’re talking about hard body cancers with a ~40 year clock. Increasing heavy metals exposure however, which uranium most certainly is, is MANY more throws of the dice. But that’s a 10-20 year clock. Unless, of course, your heavy metal is in a particularly bioavailable chemical form. I really recommend against making and ingesting those as your filter organs don’t appreciate that AT ALL. But if you do, you can speed up the clock to a months or a few years until death from early organ failure.
Speaking of chemical forms, it is a damn rare and special person that has had the privilege and displeasure of playing with pure metallic uranium. If you’ve seen some uranium in your life, it is very likely to have been an oxide, nitrate, or acetate. If you’ve handled fluorides, I feel bad for you. But uranium metal? Not many people get the experience of that as it is unpleasantly pyrophoric. Metal fires that are damn hard to extinguish, burn fucking hot, and liberate plenty of heavy metal oxides for you to inhale (SEE ALSO: heavy metals poisoning).
Firefighters hate metal fires.
Which brings us to the reasons DU gets used in weapons. They are NOT for radiological dispersal. We use them to burn metal fire hot through other metal (i.e. armor), usually in conjunction with a secondary penetrator. Also, DU is denser than lead. Lotta kinetic energy in those rounds. Because we would like them to burn at the time of use and on a target, the DU is usually in an alloy or coated form to prevent accidents when in storage. You can also use it for just dumb weight. You want to give that gravity bomb more ass to crash through a roof? Try a DU tip!
You don’t need to do anything special to make DU metal burn in air but providing intiating heat or finely dividing it to increase surfave area helps. No, I am not going to discuss details about how penetrators work. This is toxicity chat, not War Thunder chat.
Another important thing we use DU for is shielding. Sure, it’s radioactive itself, but it’s also incredibly dense. Denser than lead. Which means when you have limited space and can’t afford lead bulk, you can get the same shielding effect against much nastier things with smaller amounts of DU. Which brings us back to latency. Because DU isn’t a radiologic concern, you can use it so you don’t have to worry about the accelerator beam or the 10kCi Co-60 on the other side of the shield that would kill you in seconds to minutes.
When people find the unexploded ordnance that make a meter click, holding meters up to it for the oooooo DEADLY RADIATIONS!!! moment, I’m the person asking from a very safe distance “You have safed the explosives already, right?” The latency on explosions is very short indeed.
Rant complete. I hope you’re happy now, Dan.