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TechnoratiUranium Bonfire: Air Force Incinerated Radioactive Waste
Officials at Hill Air Force Base inadvertently orchestrated a uranium bonfire in a waste incinerator at Layton.
Over the past eight months, Hill sent a nine-ton batch of obsolete military hardware to the burn plant, unaware that the items contained "trace" amounts of depleted uranium. And when you're burning nine tons of waste, "trace" amounts add up. All told, five pounds of uranium went up in smoke.
The Weapons System Program Office at Hill is at fault. The documents spelling out the contents of the materials to be burned, according to a Hill press release, "were not readily accessible." So, instead of taking the time to track down the paperwork, officials callously threw it on the fire, and Utahns be damned.
A Hill public affairs officer said that standard safety procedures "were followed." But if standard operating procedures somehow allow uranium to be incinerated, those procedures have to change.
And the Utah Department of Environmental Quality could help keep residents safe by requiring that the Wasatch Integrated Waste Management District install radiation monitors at the burn plant to screen all incoming military waste.
And a federal probe, not a military probe, is in order. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should conduct thorough investigations.The good news is, according to Air Force officials, your health won't suffer from the blunder. Hill's calculations, reviewed by the Utah Division of Radiation Control, indicate that the public health risks are negligible.
We hope they're right, because radioactive substances aren't fit to be burned. They're supposed to be buried very deep, especially uranium that's 40 times hotter than the nuclear waste EnergySolutions accepts.
Environmental activists and public health advocates were shocked and alarmed by the radioactive revelation. You should be, too. After all, this is Utah, where toxic waste is incinerated, nuclear waste is dumped, chemical and biological weapons were tested, and the fallout from years of atomic weapons testing sickened and killed an untold number of human beings the government treated like guinea pigs.
We deserve better. A full-blown investigation and a complete explanation would be a good start.
© 2008 The Salt Lake Tribune
20 Comments so far
Show AllFIVE whole pounds of depleted uranium, (DU) burned ___ WOOWWWW !!!! ___ A really big story here. Stop the presses and everyone have a hissy fit. I don't bleieve it, five stinking pounds of DU burned and it makes the news.___ It's almost funny, not Ha-Ha funny.
Know how much DU is in a bunker buster "BIG BLUE BOMB? ___ 2,000 POUNDS.___ There is ten pounds of DU in a 105 Abrams tank shell, three pounds in a 30mm gatling gun shell.
How may thousand tons of DU has been BURNED in the past ten years by 29 seperate countries? Thousands of tons here alone in the United States on military firing and bomb ranges. Those "Big Blues" are tested.
There are over five BILLION specks of DU in a cupfull and just one microscopic speck inhaled can kill you or any child. Pretty hard to just inhale one. That would be tatamount to inhalng one grain of pollen, Deadly DU nano-grams are smaller than a grain of pollen.
This first link is a two minute read on DU, t and the second link is a lengthy article and explains fully just about all anyone needs to know about DU amunition and what it's doing to the planet and every living thing on it, down to the microbal level, or the oceans's phytoplankton which supply us with over 60% of our oxygen.
This issue had been posted so many times here I lost count and hardly anyone pays any heed to it. Indeed anyone down wind of burned DU is in real danger of eventually having cancer or any of several other medical problems within one to ten years. It also causes autism and PTSD, which a generic medical tern for radiation poisoning.
http://www.gulfwarvets.com/du_blowinginthewind.htm
http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/background.htm
Yes elmysterio -- we get to carry the torch higher,
wear stilts if needed, and never forget to come back down to the ground,
to talk to real people, eye-to-eye, with LOVE in our HEARTS,
and compassion for what is occurring (w/o "blame" and other violence )
Tiberius & Namaste:
We just have to keep telling truth to anyone who will listen... Sometimes it's as simple as a couple quick points that will set someone off to seek out the truth for themselves. Others, you have to peel away the layers of lies and propaganda like the layers of an onion to finally expose the core of truth.
I personally believe that only a small number of people are actually wired to understand the truth and what it really means. I think that the majority of the people are destined to be followers of the "official lies", and no matter how much truth they are exposed to, their brains just won't accept it.
But what can we do? Well, keep on spreading truth... and hope for the best.
elmysterio is correct. His description is a major part of the revelation I experienced when I woke up about 9/11 and saw so clearly that the twin towers were destroyed by controlled demolition. Indeed, the phoney WOT is the catch-all excuse for the class war to come out of the closet and explode on the global scene. They started it on purpose.
The WOT is WW111 as I think Noam Chomsky put it. The US can commit agressive war for whatever lie it wishes all over the world and at home, and our torture camps are for the benefit of maintaining fear, nothing more.
Yes, I am a wolf, but I am for the most part underground having discovered the depths of brainwashed individuals is far greater than one would like to imagine. After years of sharing data concerning 9/11 I have discovered how truly fukked we are. My father, just getting around to understanding the Iraq war was about oil (just a small part) refuses to let go of the "pancake" idiocy, and my father-in-law, a life long Repulican still debates the existence of Global Warming.
To live in Amerika today, is like living in the movie "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers" or the "Time Machine" where the Molock eat the ignorant Eloi.
I doubt we will be able to stir the masses from their stupor, American Idol is on tonight and the surge is working.
God Bliss Amerika, Ignorance is Bliss
Just one mess of many that never sees the light of day by today's lowered standards. Ever hear about the Spokane Wa. fire a radioactive cloud hung over the town in the 1960's? Sweep it under the rug, deny, dismiss. All erased from history like it never happened.
the massive polluter that is the DoD isn't subject to EPA or any fed/state regulations. dolphin-killing sonar is the least of the problems. the military dumps caches offshore, closed and operational bases are sitting on plumes of rocket propellant and other crap that finds it's way to the lettuce at your grocery store, etc...
Nuclear waste...depleted uranium...our soldiers and all the Iraqi and surrounding countries are being exposed daily....
Do you think the government cares....
A means to an end....be it in Utah or the Middle East...
elmysterio
You have absolutly nailed it. Perfect!
randolfski: That's a far too narrow assessment. Read your history dude. The world is a peachy place for the rich... they're not gonna suffer one iota in the coming calamity... I'm not talking about the "new rich"... the people with a couple million dollars who used to be middle class... they're gonna suffer too... I'm talking about the uber-rich... The ones that hold all the aces.
"If you want to see this situation change, own your own part it it and
then you can help make it better."
That statement tells me that you really didn't get what I was saying. That's ok. Most people can't see the big picture to realize how enslaved they really are.
HAPPY EARTH DAY UTAH!
el mysterio, the story goes that it's the rich that are suppressing us. But
this avoids "our" own responsibility in creating them. If each one of us had
just never given up on tap water and said no to canned, artificially flavored,
bad for your health soda pop, Coca Cola would probably not be the rich
corporation that it is today. The world is in a sorry state right now, for rich and
for poor. If you want to see this situation change, own your own part it it and
then you can help make it better.
Again, just another example of how the rich don't give a shit about the poor. Even you so called "middle class" Americans don't mean anything to these people. In case you haven't figured it out yet, there is a war going on... it's not in Iraq or Afghanistan... but right here at home... it's a war that's been going on for 300+ years... it's the war of the Rich vs everyone else... and they're winning. They're poisoning the environment, making food scarce and unaffordable, they're pitting us against each other in fake conflicts that do nothing but enrich themselves.
They're filling our heads with meaningless crap to distract us from what is really happening. They want you dead. The goal is massive population reduction so that only the rich, and a small handful of poor to serve them, survive. YOU are their enemy. Your children are their enemy... Their agents are all around you and you don't even recognize them. They trick average people into doing their bidding by making them feel like they belong, but really, they're just as contemptuous of these collaborators as they are of you.
All you Americans are distracted by the debacle of the pending elections... THIS is just a distraction. It really doesn't mean anything. Everyone running represents the enemy and there's NOTHING for you except more death and hardship. Once you realize this, then you can free yourself from the culture induced stupor and start to fight back. Their biggest fear is the general public realizing that they're under attack and fighting back. That's why they're quickly implementing a full blown police state so that you can't fight back.
What these police and soldiers don't realize is that the war is against them and their families too... They are collaborating in their own demise and don't even know it. Think about the Warsaw Ghetto in WW2 with the Jews all relocated to one walled off area... the Germans didn't police that area themselves, the used local Jews to police it... These Jewish police officers got paid a small wage and had power over their fellow oppressed people. In the end though, they were shipped off to the camps too.
A major upheaval is coming... are you going to be a sheep and lead off to the slaughter? OR are you going to be a wolf and take some of these elitist bastards down with you? The time is now people...
The Republicans haven't changed, namaste. They needed the benevolent old man image in the 80's to brainwash the US electorate on supply-side economics. Once they succeeded, the soft-sell was no longer needed and now the US electorate responds just fine to the likes of W, Cheney and McClone.
Can we follow the wind patterns in the JAMA or the New England Journal of Medicine?
Instead of Reagan's "thousand points of light" offering assistance to those less advantaged
WE now have Bu$h!t's "thousand points of light" emanating from those needing assistance
The Repukelicans really have changed
We make all these damm toys to kill the enemy and we can't even avoid killing ourselves with them. When will we learn not to make things we can't control?
Hoa binh
I would guess that five pounds of uranium is a small amount compared to the amount released by the uranium mines in Utah.
And is certainly small compared to the hundreds of tons blasted into the atmosphere intentionally in Iraq and elsewhere through the use of DU munitions. The atmosphere of Earth that is, the same Earth where the United States (God Bless America) is located.
And the EPA said the air at ground zero was safe.
Mmmmm...smell that fresh uranium laced air
Anyone downwind of that plutonium plume is at drastically increased risk of developing lung cancer.
Burned or not, radioactive fallout is radioactive fallout.
Eight years and they are still not done trashing this country.Tony