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[link|http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0709-07.htm|PU to DU]
quote:
As early as January 2000, the DOE admitted that its DU munitions are spiked with plutonium, neptunium and americium \ufffd "transuranic" (heavier than uranium) fission wastes from inside nuclear reactors.(19) The health consequences here are fearsome: americium -- with a half-life of 7,300 years -- decays to plutonium-239, which is more radioactive than the original americium.
DU "contains a trace amount of plutonium," said the DOE\ufffds Assistant Secretary David Michaels, who wrote to the Military Toxics Project's Tara Thornton January 20, 2000. "Recycled uranium, which came straight from one of our production sites, e.g. Hanford [Reservation, in Richland, Washington], would routinely contain transuranics at a very low level...." Michaels wrote. "We have initiated a project to characterize the level of transuranics in the various depleted uranium inventories," he said.
[link|http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0155201|Cites same govt docs]
A
