The drastic health and environmental consequences of a new generation of radioactive weapons, Depleted Uranium (DU), currently being used in U.S.-waged wars are discussed in these essays. This new kind of nuclear war is examined alongside the effects on Vietnam and Gulf war veterans and the indigenous people on whose land these weapons are being tested. Among the issues covered are the collaborative military and media cover-up of DU, the government's denial of DU's toxic effects, uranium development on Native American land, nuclear testing on the Marshall Islands, and radioactive residue in the Middle East. Contributors include Ramsey Clark, Pat Broudy, and Helen Caldicott. Official government documents on DU and its effects and charts illustrating where DU is tested and stored in the United States are included for further examination.

This books provides an in-depth analysis of the international legal aspects of the use of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition and armour. The military use of DU has been surrounded by considerable controversy, mainly as regards the health and environmental risks that such use entails. The debate about DU has thus far been highly polarised, with one end of the spectrum rejecting any risk whatsoever and the other end suggesting that the use of DU leads to severe health and environmental consequences, including Gulf-War syndrome, whenever it is used. Rather than settling these controversies, the book takes as a starting point a precautionary approach in light of the considerable remaining scientific uncertainties. It examines various principles and rules of international law, which would be at play if the health and environmental concerns regarding the use of DU were to materialise.

The production of nuclear materials for the national defense was an intense, nationwide effort that began with the Manhattan Project and continued throughout the Cold War. Now many of these product materials, by-products, and precursors, such as irradiated nuclear fuels and targets, have been declared as excess by the Department of Energy (DOE). Most of this excess inventory has been, or will be, turned over to DOE's Office of Environmental Management (EM), which is responsible for cleaning up the former production sites. Recognizing the scientific and technical challenges facing EM, Congress in 1995 established the EM Science Program (EMSP) to develop and fund directed, long-term research that could substantially enhance the knowledge base available for new cleanup technologies and decision making. The EMSP has previously asked the National Academies' National Research Council for advice for developing research agendas in subsurface contamination, facility deactivation and decommissioning, high-level waste, and mixed and transuranic waste. For this study the committee was tasked to provide recommendations for a research agenda to improve the scientific basis for DOE's management of its high-cost, high-volume, or high-risk excess nuclear materials and spent nuclear fuels. To address its task, the committee focused its attention on DOE's excess plutonium-239, spent nuclear fuels, cesium-137 and strontium-90 capsules, depleted uranium, and higher actinide isotopes.

Depleted uranium, a component of some weapons systems, has been in use by the U.S. military since the 1991 Gulf War. Military personnel have been exposed to depleted uranium as the result of friendly fire incidents, cleanup and salvage operations, and proximity to burning depleted uranium-containing tanks and ammunition. Under a Congressional mandate, the Department of Defense sought guidance from the Institute of Medicine in evaluating the feasibility and design of an epidemiologic study that would assess health outcomes of exposure to depleted uranium. The study committee examined several options to study health outcomes of depleted uranium exposure in military and veteran populations and concluded that it would be difficult to design a study to comprehensively assess depleted uranium-related health outcomes with currently available data. The committee further concluded that the option most likely to obtain useful information about depleted uranium-related health outcomes would be a prospective cohort study if future military operations involve exposure to depleted uranium. The book contains recommendations aimed at improving future epidemiologic studies and identifying current active-duty military personnel and veterans with potential DU exposure.

A compilation of published scientific information, including human, animal, cellular, and theoretical studies, this book provides the most current and comprehensive collection of information on depleted uranium health hazards. The editor and her international panel of contributors are clinical and basic researchers at the forefront of toxicology, c

This report presents the findings of the first-ever international assessment of the environmental impact of depleted uranium (DU) when used in a real conflict situation. Following the confirmation by NATO that DU had been used during the Kosovo conflict, the United Nations Environment Program organized a scientific field mission to investigate the possible environmental consequences. This report presents its findings and conclusions on the presence and extent of DU contamination at the areas studied, the corresponding risks to the environment, and possible mitigation actions.

Originally published in 1983, this book presents both the technical and political information necessary to evaluate the emerging threat to world security posed by recent advances in uranium enrichment technology. Uranium enrichment has played a relatively quiet but important role in the history of efforts by a number of nations to acquire nuclear weapons and by a number of others to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. For many years the uranium enrichment industry was dominated by a single method, gaseous diffusion, which was technically complex, extremely capital-intensive, and highly inefficient in its use of energy. As long as this remained true, only the richest and most technically advanced nations could afford to pursue the enrichment route to weapon acquisition. But during the 1970s this situation changed dramatically. Several new and far more accessible enrichment techniques were developed, stimulated largely by the anticipation of a rapidly growing demand for enrichment services by the world-wide nuclear power industry. This proliferation of new techniques, coupled with the subsequent contraction of the commercial market for enriched uranium, has created a situation in which uranium enrichment technology might well become the most important contributor to further nuclear weapon proliferation. Some of the issues addressed in this book are: A technical analysis of the most important enrichment techniques in a form that is relevant to analysis of proliferation risks; A detailed projection of the world demand for uranium enrichment services; A summary and critique of present institutional non-proliferation arrangements in the world enrichment industry, and An identification of the states most likely to pursue the enrichment route to acquisition of nuclear weapons.