The use of depleted uranium munitions has been fiercely debated, with opponents like the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons saying there are dangerous health risks from ingesting or inhaling depleted uranium dust, including cancers and birth defects.
Again?
UK did it last time. But yeah, same shit under a different name.
Using depleted uranium rounds on your own territory seems bad. Especially since ukraine is a major exporter of grain.
Then again , shooting a gun inside is stupid, until someone is breaking in and trying to kill you.
If there’s one country to trust with nuclear safety it’s actually Ukraine. Capable engineers and scientists, understanding of institutional failure, and certainly not least memory of Chernobyl.
According to the article, studies in places where the ammunition has been used “indicated that the existence of depleted uranium residues dispersed in the environment does not pose a radiological hazard to the population of the affected regions.”
What effect does it have on the grain?
And an environmental hazard, since Uranium is poisonous?
Ok, but the alternative is lead or tungsten, both of which are similarly toxic. So unless you are suggesting Ukraine only fights with artisanaly grown wooden weapons I’m not sure what point you’re making.
Did you completely ignore what he referenced in the article?
As well as being very mildly radioactive, depleted uranium is still a heavy metal, so can poison you in a similar way to lead. IIRC, that’s the most dangerous aspect of the material, and isn’t mentioned by the article.
As opposed to the other bullets that are also heavy metals.
No.
Does not compute. Why should depleted uranium have any effect on grain production. Its strong radioactive components are, as the name says, depleted. The only worry is inhalation immediately following impact.
I think there’s way too much misinformation about this and way too many people talking without a clue
Then again, shooting a gun inside is stupid, until someone is breaking in and trying to kill you.
Killing the opponent is the last resort in most developed countries.
Even as they’re burying your neighbors in mass graves? Interesting…
War has different rules.
Wine cave warrior NAFO ghouls are already doing Adults In The Room armchair calculations about how these death treats will increase chances of a profitable victory for their corporate masters by .03216% and how it’s a heroic sacrifice that disposable Ukrainians must make to defend the land for future profitability.
🍷 🍷
Oh well… The amount of health risks that these rounds would cause would pale in comparison to the mines that the Orcs have planted everywhere. Anything to drive out the invaders!
beep beep beep
Orcs
The only time before the Ukraine War that I saw this term used to refer to real human beings was on Stormfront
Why are you visiting stormfront? Lol outing yourself so readily.
Uh oh! Hexbears been infiltrated!
Libs saw the events unfolding and were all like “YES! Now I can do socially acceptable racism! ORCORCORCORCORCORC”
The mask fell off awful quick.
Because calling someone an Orc is so much worse than kidnapping children and raping woman.
is this a /s or a fr moment
Their name is UraniumBlazer
A fr moment
Can’t wait for Azov to become the new Taliban and bite America in the ass
That guy is about as real as the elections in a Soviet country.
There’s no proof he’s ever even been to Ukraine 😂
Seems like a guy who would have fit right in: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cohen-ukraine-commentary-idUSKBN1GV2TY
Aw jeez his made up record would have fit right into this article?
Who cares he’s still not real.
How do you know? So it is just your opinion? There is a video with testimony - what exactly do you got that makes you so sure?
There’s literally no proof he’s ever been to Ukraine. You want me to prove a negative. Good luck with that.
Edit: lol I’m gonna do the impossible. He couldn’t have been in Ukraine while being simultaneously in prison.
about as real as the elections in a Soviet country
Because capitalist elections between corporate donors are so real lmao
Are you going to vote for Bloomberg or Blackstone next year? Good little piggy.
You Americans are something else. There’s a world outside your little shithole bubble you know.
I’m not even American. Our economy is global and America is the imperial core of that economy.
One of my local PMs was caught taking bribes from the NRA a few years back ffs
File size requirements made me create this low res monstrosity lmao, also please do replace the Tilted Towers for the Palace of Culture and Sciences for thr more realistic scenario.
“Lol, how could people in the past be so dumb? Anyway, I’m off to give cluster bombs to some Nazi paramilitary groups.”
TIL. Apparently what it actually said was “The Gallant People of Afghanistan,” but the point is largely the same.
I thought they went back and changed it after the fact.
That’s what the rumor said, but googling seems to indicate it was a hoax. Though like I said the original is basically the same thing.
I mean who else it could even mean in USA movie? Especially considering what was in that particular movie.
bite America in the ass
It won’t be America it bites in the ass; they’ll be a deadly menace to their neighbors in the West (as I would imagine Russia is going to remain on its toes about armed Ukrainian militias). They’ve been pretty open about their far right views. Frankly this was actually a brilliant strategy for the government; much like how they turned the Middle East into nations yearning for America’s protection, so too will the rest of (Western) Europe now become new clients. As a business strategy it’s brilliant, my only question is why European governments and the idiots who vote for them over there actually going along with this; you’re watching the car careening towards the cliff, why are you cheering the guy pushing it from behind rather than slamming on the brakes.
Even the Taliban didn’t commit 9/11 until the US had already been engaged in military actions in Afghanistan for years by that point. War profiteering is the point.
Luckily, the uranium dust is only a problem if the Ukrainian tanks actually get in sight of the Russians.
Turns out UK managed to develop stealth tanks and didn’t tell anybody.
No one found out, stealthy
Yet more confirmation that the West regards Ukrainians as subhuman, and that they know they’re not getting the territory back. Generations of birth defects, the unexploded bombs that cluster bombs leave behind, more and more people being drafted and shoved into a meat grinder in a war that’s already lost, just so some American ghouls can make a bit of extra cash off their Raytheon stocks.
None of this was worth it. But it’s going to keep happening. The US will keep arming Nazis and pushing war over diplomacy and destabilizing everything until something is done to get rid of those bastard war profiteers and the ghouls who lied us into Iraq and Afghanistan.
This shit’s so fucking stupid. Can’t wait for the chickenhawks to call me a bad person while sitting behind their keyboards demanding others be forced to fight in their stead.
although the Ukrainians using such rounds in Ukraine also seem to regard other Ukrainians as subhuman
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This war wouldn’t have even happened in the first place if not for the United States.
Are the NATO soldiers that definitely kicked off the war by invading Russia in the room with us now?
Ah yes, history started in 2022. Mind reminding me by whose sabotage caused the Soviet Union to be illegaly disbanded? Because guess what, this story starts in 1989 and context for many of it’s intricacies begins for a few cases even earlier. Including the Nazis of Ukraine and why they are so prominent in our (Hexbear and Lemmygrad) discussions.
Geopolitics and conflicts aren’t defined by boots on the ground action, that is just an end stage and consequence of escalating actions done beforehand. So no, there is no NATO soldiers in the room with us right now. But there is plenty of high ranking officials, military and not, who have been cooking this proxy war for a while now and the consequence is Russian aggression and deaths of thousands.
All of this could’ve been avoided. But you don’t care. You just want to be above them morally, as that’s all that matters for you. Being on the “good team”, like it’s sports.
“Can you see those aggresive ruskies? Killing innocents without reason! At least we aren’t like them!”
Ironic amd sadening.
Are the high ranking officials in the room with us now
As a German, thank you. Meanwhile we’re still dragging our feet with the TAURUS, sigh.
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It’s only a hazard if you are handling it all the time, or you hang out around old targets where there is a fuck ton of uranium dust just waiting to get stirred up. If it gets in your lungs, you are not going to be a happy camper after a few years. Even so, depleted uranium emits alpha particles which is the weakest form of radiation.
I don’t deny the fact that uranium dust is bad. The reasons why it is bad are usually left out of the all the articles that hate on it for the wrong reasons.
Hell, here in Colorado we have more issues with radon. As far as uranium is concerned, there are problems with rainwater runoff concentrating it from the old mines that we have, but that is about it. Of course that isn’t good, but it takes massive tailings piles from old mines to cause issues for groundwater and such.
ruzzia orcs
had trouble spelling Russia, did ya? your brain isn’t worth saving. cringey reddit /r/worldnews phrases can fuck off forever into the pit.
edited because i realized i wasn’t on hexbear. so yea, that is the more polite version.
We all feel for you. Must suck to start a war and then lose it.
Ooc, Why do you think Russia invaded?
Easy: they think they are a superpower and that they can use their military to keep independent, neighbouring countries aligned with them politically in order to protect their geopolitical interests. They are not and they can’t.
And when you day “aligned geopoliticaly” what’s that exactly?
It means that government in a given country will side with Russia on international scene in order to protect their interests. Isn’t that obvious? Like Hungary is politically aligned with Russia but Germany isn’t.
thank you for your service, cummunism
“Orcs”
Ew.
I hope some U238 finds its way into your lungs, fascist scum.
Do you think these rounds just magically disappear after they’re used? They’re going to continue to litter the land and cause generations of people completely uninvolved in the conflict to suffer from birth defects, lung damage, and cancer, as can be seen after its use in Iraq. No one is immune to depleted uranium. At this point you can just admit that you care more about killing Russians than you do defending Ukraine, consequences be damned.
The problem is that it’s a heavy metal poison not that it’s radioactive.
the problem is both but the heavy metal is worse.
And lead, famously, isn’t a heavy metal. And neither is copper (used for jacks)
No no Ukraine is only allowed to eject invaders with the most pure tungsten rounds.
No you’re right our brave mujahideen fighters in Ukraine deserve the right to have their conscripts poison and maim their own children. They’ve got the uranium bullets and cluster bombs, but surely we’ve got some agent orange around here we can spare.
You understand that Ukrainians live in Ukraine and poisoning their children is bad
I can’t believe you are seriously arguing our “do not poison Ukrainian children” policy is evidence we do not care about Ukraine
Ask them whether a miniscule chance of light poisoning is preferable to getting abducted.
Or, as happened just recently in Germany, thrown down a bridge.
If you have another idea of how to get Russians to GTFO of Ukraine go ahead, present it at the UN, get your peace nobel price. In the mean time, STFU when people are defending themselves against an imperialist aggressor.
Ask them whether a miniscule chance of light poisoning is preferable to getting abducted
on what medical basis are you rejecting the established medical position on the severity of heavy metal poisoning.
You didn’t read the article did you. Hint: Look for the IAEA quote.
Then there will no longer be people the Ukrainians regard as Russians in Ukraine.
The last years of the Donetsk conflict have seen double-digits civilian casualties. There were about 2000 in the first year, then there was exponential decline.
Have you compared recent pictures of Donetsk with Mariopol or Bakhmut? I’ll give you a hint: One is still standing. If Ukraine wanted to it could easily flatten Donetsk, it’s in artillery range. A million Russian-speaking inhabitants, if Ukrainians are so genocidal why don’t they just go for it?
Russia killed more civilians in the first months of the 2022 invasion that died overall in Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014. A fuckton of those Russian-speaking (like in e.g. Mariopol). Russia abducted more children than died in the “people’s republics”.
In other words: Shut the fuck up with your “Ukraine is shelling Russian-speaking Ukrainians” bullshit. Either you’re severely misinformed, or a straight-up Putin bot.
And with that in mind: Do you seriously think that the proper way to react to an invasion, an invasion which comes with near uncountable human rights abuses and disregard for the civilian population, to react to that with “Oh, since you’re asking so nicely Russia, here, have a cookie”? No. Fuck that, fuck you, and fuck everything you believe in.
You really shouldn’t uncritically accept anything Ukraine or Russia says about the war. Of course they’re going to say the other side is targeting civilians while we only attack valid military targets. Don’t you remember Libya? Iraq? Afghanistan? Bosnia? We know how the news operates in these situations.
Russia abducted more children than died in the “people’s republics”.
This is misframing refugees fleeing into Russia as abduction. These aren’t moustache-twirling villains.
These decisions are being made by people who will not be having children with birth defects because of them
Ahh wonderful, time for so many future children to be born horribly disfigured via contaminated drinking water. Also don’t forget all the booming cancer rates!
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You sure seem angry about someone not wanting children harmed
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Lmao wow
what the fuck did you just say to me,
We have advanced beyond fighting to the last Ukranian and are now involving future Ukranians
I’m just glad that as an Adult in the room, I’m on the right side of history. Arming Ukranian Nazis with depleted uranium is actually the least evil option and anyone who doesn’t understand that is a child.
Another 50 billion for the cause!
The 500k homeless people in the US humbly accept and understand.
Seems a little strange considering their refusal to provide M1 Abrams tanks from their stockpile as these have depleted uranium armor.
Maybe there are way more secrets in making armor with depleted uranium (and certainly other things layered in) than just shaping a shell with it?
They’ll receive their first 14 M1A1 by Sept. 25. I don’t think any foreign countries get the reactive armor except for the US.
The UK.
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The amount of ruscist sympathisers in this thread is depressing. Are depleted uranium munitions fucked up? Yeah and they shouldn’t be used. But that isn’t an excuse to bootlick a fascist invader that is already performing ethnic cleansing on territories they took last year
I have no issue with your blocklist (and not gonna downvote your comment), but i still have to say that your position is pretty strange. Why at all join lemmy.ml which is known as real Babel tower with wide range of different opinions without any of them being dominant or enforced (and that differs .ml from .world, beehaw, hexbear, lemmygrad and so on)? If you need echo chamber, you can join other instance or get back to reddit, no reason to wait someone to code some functions.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The rounds, which could help destroy Russian tanks, are part of a new military aid package for Ukraine set to be unveiled in the next week.
The munitions can be fired from U.S. Abrams tanks that, according to a person familiar with the matter, are expected be delivered to Ukraine in the coming weeks.
It follows an earlier decision by the Biden administration to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, despite concerns over the dangers such weapons pose to civilians.
The United States used depleted uranium munitions in massive quantities in the 1990 and 2003 Gulf Wars and the NATO bombing of former Yugoslavia in 1999.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, says that studies in former Yugoslavia, Kuwait, Iraq and Lebanon “indicated that the existence of depleted uranium residues dispersed in the environment does not pose a radiological hazard to the population of the affected regions.”
Parts of the country are already strewn with unexploded ordnance from cluster bombs and other munitions and hundreds of thousands of anti-personnel mines.
The original article contains 499 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 66%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I’m sure Ukrainian soldiers on the front line are worried about cancer and birth defects.
We have to remember that Russia caused this war, however. So they also caused the depleted uranium being a possible health risk for future ukrainian children.
This makes sense.
I imagine there’s a lot more reasons for birth defect spikes post US mil ops in addition to this. The military isn’t exactly an environmentally conscious operation. ☠️
Agent orange is what plants crave
Sure, burn pits and other crap will help.
But this kind of ammo, kids will find and hang on to. They bring it home, add it to their collection of other cool shit they’ve scavenged…and then their brothers and sisters are born with malformed limbs, mishaped heads, etc.
There have been a lot of stories written about it over the years. The one I read was specifically about Iraq I believe, but it was a while ago.
Proper chunks of depleted uranium are more or less harmless. It’s dangerous if you inhale or ingest large quantities over a long period of time. Not just having it on a shelf
To be fair, the impact of DU is mostly because of heavy metal poisoning, not radioactivity.
Ok but the alternatives are not environmentally conscious either, finally the people who’s land it is should be the ones making choices about the conditions of that land
The alternative is to stop using people of Ukraine to fight a proxy war with Russia.
Then why don’t you ask Russia to withdraw, wouldn’t that be easier?
Russia is obviously not going to withdraw, and you or me asking Russia to withdraw isn’t going to make it happen. However, people living in western countries do have at least some influence on their own regimes. Of course, the reason western regimes can keep the proxy war going is precisely because a lot of scumbags are cheering it on right now.
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People of Donbas whom the Ukrainian regime was abusing for the past eight years asked Russia for help to defend their lives and home. The atrocities the Ukrainian regime was committing were even covered by CNN in 2014 https://twitter.com/paulius60/status/1611148483859255296
Meanwhile, the west is not helping Ukraine, it’s prolonging the war which results in more people dying without changing the outcome. This war could’ve been over last March when Russia and Ukraine almost signed a deal, but UK and US decided to torpedo it. If that’s your idea of helping Ukraine then you need to get your head checked.
The people of Ukraine seem to have a somewhat different view on the matter
That’s a really convenient narrative based on the fallacy of homogenizing Ukraine. Let’s take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Mearsheimer is certainly not pro Russian in any sense, and a proponent of US global hegemony. First, here’s the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:
here’s how the election in 2004 went:
this is the 2010 election:
As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:
Maybe learn a bit about the subject first.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
election in 2004
2010 election
I wonder if anything of note happened between then and now, in other news Donald Trump is still president and gay marriage is illegal in the US
Maybe learn a bit about the subject first.
I suggest you go to Kyiv in the grocery store and explain this to the workers there
Oh yeah, things of note definitely happened since then
- https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/20/ukraine-widespread-use-cluster-munitions
- https://twitter.com/paulius60/status/1611148483859255296
I suggest you go to Donbas and explain the above to people there that the regime you support has been maiming for the past decade.
What I see is a very deliberate attempt of russia to try to breed out an ethnicity in an attempt to create a reason to take more land. Which is exactly what happened- maybe learn about the subject first.
Lol the people of ukraine are fighting against a war of aggression from Russia. That’s it.
The alternative bring tungsten? It’s very stable so anything besides eating a spent rod isn’t going to have effects. If it’s in the air it’ll just be inert. Even if it gets in your lungs it’ll be like any other dust. DU on the other hand would keep emitting radiation internally.
But which people? Government or the people who actually own the land?
And I guess, their favourite choice of “Don’t use any weapons on my land and just clear off voluntairily” is not an option.
I don’t get why people hate on the Ukraine for using weapons to defend themselves. Not like they chose to be attacked.
Is ammo made from lead that much better? I honestly don’t know. Sure the radiation sucks but Uranium, at least the isotope they’re sending is “barely” radioactive. It’s the same Uranium people had in their plates etc. The toxicity is probably the far more relevant factor but I don’t know how Uranium compares to lead.
It’s nothing to do with radioactivity, it’s the toxicity that comes with most heavy metals.
There isn’t radiation in Depleted uranium.
Depleted uranium is not really that radioactive. Everything is technically radioactive eventually though. Depleted uranium is what’s left behind when you seperate the radioactive stuff out. It’s a heavy metal still, so isn’t good for you, but heavy metals will always be involved. Trying to have a war using only healthy, organic, ethically sourced munitions isn’t going to happen.
The amount of Ukrainians dying right now will pale in comparison to those effected by the munitions.
The controversy around depleted uranium rounds is way overblown.
Even in Iraq the evidence is super inconclusive. And yes birth defects rose however the entire country basically collapsed for years and nothing clearly indicates it was the DU used.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s nasty stuff. But this is war, more people are getting killed by bombs then any DU related cancer can cause.
In Basra the rate of leukemia in children rose dramatically and that is too specific of a disease to not be linked to DU exposure due to the heavy use of it in surrounding tank battles.
How do you you it’s not linked to any of the other hundreds of dangerous chemicals?
Because the issue is specific to the region and started specifically after the tank battle where DU ammunition was used. If it would be a general issue with some dangerous chemical being used, we’d expect to see similiar issues in other regions. Of course it is hypotheticakky possible that at the same time some dangerous and persistant chemical exposure happened in the region, but that is not plausible and also the US would have a strong interest in finding such an alternative explanation. But there isn’t any research published, that provided an alternative.
Also look into the wording of the US when sending the ammunition to Ukraine. They state that no radiation hazard is to be expected for the Ukrainians. They do not talk about a toxicological hazard.
- correlation ≠ causation. 2) if the disease is caused by DU, is it due to the radioactivity or the fact that DU is a heavy metal?
i never said it had to be because of radiation. Even just in its effect as a heavy metal it seems to be much worse. Also it could be that it becomes airborn more easily than other metals such as lead, so the wreckage of tanks shot with DU are more dangerous to the people cleaning them up.
Why are you so worried about speculated harms when Ukrainians are actually being raped, tortured, and murdered by russians? Your lack of humanity is showing
Turning “we need to weigh benefits and costs” into “your lack of humanity is showing” is quite a take and obviously has nothing to do with reality.
Everyone should worry. Depleted uranium will contaminate large crop production areas and later these grains will be sold all around the world. Everybody will eat some.
What does the “depleted” part of depleted uranium mean?
Are you denser then Uranium? Why do you think there is an issue with waste from nuclear power plants? Hint: it is radioactive!
Calls me dense, doesn’t know what depleted uranium is
Sure, whatever makes you feel lighter.
Depleted means that the radioactive isotope is lower in concentration. It still is somehow radioactive (it’s almost fine if not ingested) and still remains a heavy and toxic metal.
Banana is somehow radioactive too you know. Or granit. Anciant Greece monument often are above the radiation levels allowed in a nuclear power plant.
Also, while you talk about it, lead is far far more toxic than depleted uranium. Many metals are toxic actually, that’s why your government monitor water meant for consumption.
Ancient Greece used marble for monuments, not granite…
lead is far far more toxic than depleted uranium
Looks like that might not be correct. https://lemmy.world/comment/3108233
Right, so how are all these large areas and crops going to be contaminated?
And what is the level of risk of that happening?
There are multiple different isotopes of uranium, depleted has less of the kinds good for bombs or fuel.
No it won’t
You will get cancer sooner by staying in the sun on a beach or anywhere.
Yes, Ukrainian soldiers on front line are worried about cancer and birth defects. They are rational human beings who hope to return to their homes and live long lives and grow healthy children, not some subhumans with only intent to kill, kill, kill, as you wish to think.
I don’t know how rational this is. Given how many soldiers have died so far, if I were a Ukrainian sent to fight on the front line, I wouldn’t expect to be coming back. Rather I’d hope that I contribute to the defeat of the enemy, so that my children or my comrades children don’t grow up under Russian rule. I’m not in their shoes of course. There’s no universal motivation so maybe what you say is more prevalent. That said, this war might not end without soldiers doing a lot more killing so “kill, kill, kill” might be an appropriate viewpoint.