|
Le Monde diplomatique
-----------------------------------------------------
March 2002
DEPLETED URANIUM IN BUNKER BOMBS
America's big dirty secret
_______________________________________________________
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.
by ROBERT JAMES PARSONS *
_______________________________________________________
'The immediate concern for medical professionals and
employees of aid organisations remains the threat of
extensive depleted uranium (DU) contamination in
Afghanistan.' This is one of the conclusions of a
130-page report, Mystery Metal Nightmare in Afghanistan?
(1), by Dai Williams, an independent researcher and
occupational psychologist. It is the result of more than
a year of research into DU and its effects on those
exposed to it.
Using internet sites of both NGOs (2) and arms
manufacturers, Williams has come up with information that
he has cross-checked and compared with weapons that the
Pentagon has reported indeed boasted about using during
the war. What emerges is a startling and frightening
vision of war, both in Afghanistan and in the future.
Since 1997 the United States has been modifying and
upgrading its missiles and guided (smart) bombs.
Prototypes of these bombs were tested in the Kosovo
mountains in 1999, but a far greater range has been
tested in Afghanistan. The upgrade involves replacing a
conventional warhead by a heavy, dense metal one (3).
Calculating the volume and the weight of this mystery
metal leads to two possible conclusions: it is either
tungsten or depleted uranium.
Tungsten poses problems. Its melting point (3,422°C)
makes it very hard to work; it is expensive; it is
produced mostly by China; and it does not burn. DU is
pyrophoric, burning on impact or if it is ignited, with a
melting point of 1,132°C; it is much easier to process;
and as nuclear waste, it is available free to arms
manufacturers. Further, using it in a range of weapons
significantly reduces the US nuclear waste storage
problem.
This type of weapon can penetrate many metres of
reinforced concrete or rock in seconds. It is equipped
with a detonator controlled by a computer that measures
the density of the material passed through and, when the
warhead reaches the targeted void or a set depth,
detonates the warhead, which then has an explosive and
incendiary effect. The DU burns fiercely and rapidly,
carbonising everything in the void, while the DU itself
is transformed into a fine uranium oxide powder. Although
only 30% of the DU of a 30mm penetrator round is
oxidised, the DU charge of a missile oxidises 100%. Most
of the dust particles produced measure less than 1.5
microns, small enough to be breathed in.
For a few researchers in this area, the controversy over
the use of DU weapons during the Kosovo war got
side-tracked. Instead of asking what weapons might have
been used against most of the targets (underground
mountain bunkers) acknowledged by Nato, discussion
focused on 30mm anti-tank penetrator rounds, which Nato
had admitted using but which would have been ineffective
against superhardened underground installations.
However, as long as the questions focused on such
anti-tank penetrators, they dealt with rounds whose
maximum weight was five kilos for a 120mm round. The DU
explosive charges in the guided bomb systems used in
Afghanistan can weigh as much as one and a half metric
tons (as in Raytheon's Bunker Buster GBU-28) (4).
Who cares?
In Geneva, where most of the aid agencies active in
Afghanistan are based, Williams's report has caused
varied reactions. The United Nations Office of the High
Commissioner for Refugees and the Office for the
Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs have circulated it.
But it does not seem to have worried agency and programme
directors much. Only Médecins sans Frontiéres and the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP) say they fear an
environmental and health catastrophe.
In March and April 2001, UNEP and the World Health
Organisation (WHO) published reports on DU, reports that
are frequently cited by those claiming DU is innocuous.
The Pentagon emphasises that the organisations are
independent and neutral. But the UNEP study is, at best,
compromised. The WHO study is unreliable.
The Kosovo assessment mission that provided the basis for
the UNEP analysis was organised using maps supplied by
Nato; Nato troops accompanied the researchers to protect
them from unexploded munitions, including cluster bomb
sub-munitions. These sub-munitions, as Williams
discovered, were probably equipped with DU
shaped-charges. Nato troops prevented researchers from
any contact with DU sub-munitions, even from discovering
their existence.
During the 16 months before the UNEP mission, the
Pentagon sent at least 10 study teams into the field and
did major clean-up operations (5). Out of 8,112 anti-tank
penetrator rounds fired on the sites studied, the UNEP
team recovered only 11, although many more would not have
been burned. And, 18 to 20 months after the firing, the
amount of dust found directly on sites hit by these
rounds was particularly small.
The WHO undertook no proper epidemiological study, only
an academic desk study. Under pressure from the
International Atomic Energy Agency, the WHO confined
itself to studying DU as a heavy-metal, chemical
contaminant. In January 2001, alerted to the imminent
publication by Le Monde diplomatique of an article
attacking its inaction (6), the WHO held a press
conference and announced a $2m fund eventually $20m for
research into DU. According Dr Michael Repacholi of the
WHO, the report on DU, under way since 1999 and
supervised by the British geologist Barry Smith, would be
expanded to include radiation contamination. The work
would include analyses of urine of people exposed to DU,
conducted to determine the exposure level.
But the monograph, published 10 weeks later, was merely a
survey of existing literature on the subject. Out of
hundreds of thousands of monographs published since 1945,
which ought to have been explored in depth, the report
covered only monographs on chemical contamination, with a
few noteworthy exceptions. The few articles about dealing
with radiation contamination that had been consulted came
from the Pentagon and the Rand Corporation, the Pentagon
think- tank. It is unsurprising that the report was
bland.
The recommendations of the two reports were common sense,
and repeated advice already given by the WHO and echoed
regularly by the aid organisations working in Kosovo.
This included marking off known target sites, collecting
penetrator rounds wherever possible, keeping children
away from contaminated sites, and the suggested
monitoring of some wells later on.
Uranium plus
The problem can be summed up as two key findings:
o Radiation emitted by DU threatens the human body
because, once DU dust has been inhaled, it becomes an
internal radiation source; international radiation
protection standards, the basis of expert claims that DU
is harmless, deal only with external radiation sources;
o Dirty DU the UNEP report, for all its failings,
deserves credit for mentioning this. Uranium from
reactors, recycled for use in munitions, contains
additional highly toxic elements, such as plutonium, 1.6
kilogrammes of which could kill 8bn people. Rather than
depleted uranium, it should be called uranium plus.
In a French TV documentary on Canal+ in January 2001 (7),
a team of researchers presented the results of an
investigation into a gaseous diffusion recycling plant in
Paducah, Kentucky, US. According to the lawyer for
100,000 plaintiffs, who are past and present plant
employees, they were contaminated because of flagrant
non-compliance with basic safety standards; the entire
plant is irrevocably contaminated, as is everything it
produces. The documentary claimed that the DU in the
missiles that were dropped on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and
Iraq is likely to be a product of this plant.
These weapons represent more than just a new approach to
warfare. The US rearmament programme launched during
Ronald Reagan's presidency was based on the premise that
the victor in future conflicts would be the side that
destroyed the enemy's command and communications centres.
Such centres are increasingly located in superhardened
bunkers deep underground.
Hitting such sites with nuclear weapons would do the job
well, but also produce radiation that even the Pentagon
would have to acknowledge as fearsome, not to mention the
bad public relations arising from mushroom-shaped clouds
in a world aware of the dangers of nuclear war. DU
warheads seem clean: they produce a fire modest in
comparison with a nuclear detonation, though the
incendiary effect can be just as destructive.
The information that Williams has gathered (8) shows that
after computer modelling in 1987, the US conducted the
first real operational tests against Baghdad in 1991. The
war in Kosovo provided further opportunity to test, on
impressively hard targets, DU weapon prototypes as well
as weapons already in production. Afghan-istan has seen
an extension and amplification of such tests. But at the
Pentagon there is little transparency about this.
Williams cites several press articles (9) in December
2001 mentioning NBC (nuclear-biological-chemical) teams
in the field checking for possible contamination. Such
contamination, according to the US government, would be
attributed to the Taliban. But, last October, Afghan
doctors, citing rapid deaths from internal ailments, were
accusing the coalition of using chemical and radioactive
weapons. The symptoms they reported (haemorrhaging,
pulmonary constriction and vomiting) could have resulted
from radiation contamination.
On 5 December, when a friendly-fire bomb hit coalition
soldiers, media representatives were all immediately
removed from the scene and locked up in a hangar.
According to the Pentagon, the bomb was a GBU-31,
carrying a BLU-109 warhead. The Canal+ documentary shows
an arms manufacturer's sales representative at an
international fair in Dubai in 1999, just after the
Kosovo war. He is presenting a BLU-109 warhead and
describing its penetration capabilities against
superhardened underground targets, explaining that this
model had been tested in a recent war.
Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defence, on 16 January
this year admitted that the US had found radiation in
Afghanistan (10). But this, he reassured, was merely from
DU warheads (supposedly belonging to al-Qaida); he did
not explain how al-Qaida could have launched them without
planes. Williams points out that, even if the coalition
has used no DU weapons, those attributed to al-Qaida
might turn out to be an even greater source of
contamination, especially if they came from Russia, in
which case the DU could be even dirtier than that from
Paducah.
Following its assessment mission in the Balkans, UNEP set
up a post-conflict assessment unit. Its director, Henrik
Slotte, has announced that it is ready to work in
Afghanistan as soon as possible, given proper security,
unimpeded access to hit sites, and financing. The WHO
remains silent. When questions about the current state of
the DU research fund were addressed to Jon Lidon,
spokesman for the director general, Dr Gro Harlem
Brundtland, the WHO did not answer. Yet Williams urges
that studies begin immediately, as victims of severe UD
exposure may soon all be dead, yet with their deaths
attributed to the rigours of winter.
In Jefferson County, Indiana, the Pentagon has closed the
200-acre (80-hectare) proving ground where it used to
test-fire DU rounds. The lowest estimate for cleaning up
the site comes to $7.8bn, not including permanent storage
of the earth to a depth of six metres and of all the
vegetation. Considering the cost too high, the military
finally decided to give the tract to the National Park
Service for a nature preserve an offer that was promptly
refused. Now there is talk of turning it into a National
Sacrifice Zone and closing it forever. This gives an idea
of the fate awaiting those regions of the planet where
the US has used and will use depleted uranium.
____________________________________________________
* Journalist, Geneva
(1) See website
(2) The internet sites of Janes Defense Information, the
Federation of American Scientists, the Centre of Defense
Information.
(3) See FAS Website
(4) FAS and USA Today
(5) Chronology of environmental sampling in the Balkans
(6) See Deafening silence on depleted uranium, Le Monde
diplomatique English edition, February 2001.
(7) La Guerre radioactive secrète, by Martin Meissonnier,
Roger Trilling, Guillaume d'Allessandro and Luc Hermann,
first broadcast in February 2000; updated and rebroadcast
in January 2001 under the title L'Uranium appauvri, nous
avons retrouvé l'usine contaminée by Roger Trilling and
Luc Hermann.
(8) The Use of Modeling and Simulation in the Planning of
Attacks on Iraqi Chemical and Biological Warfare Targets
(9) For example 'New Evidence is Adding to US Fears of
Al-Qaida Dirty Bomb', International Herald Tribune,
December 5, 2001; 'Uranium Reportedly Found in Tunnel
Complex', USA Today, December 24, 2001.
(10) 'US Says More Weapons Sites Found in Afghanistan',
Reuters, January 16, 2002.
Translated by the author
____________________________________________________
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1997-2002 Le Monde diplomatique
|
|