Not sure if it's in the right board here but anyway:

I was listening to this guy talking about planes and he sort of said that every plane contains Uranium (!?) to balance the plane..Uranium is very heavy he says.
Ok,then he goes on about New York being contaminated because of the 9/11 incident.
This all sounds very dubious to me but the fact is this guy isn't just some axxhole,he seemed to
know what he was talking about...although I very much doubt this whole story of uranium in planes,it's sounds far too dangerous anyway.
Does anyone have any facts?True or false?

I'm no expert, and I don't have the actual facts on hand at the moment, but I'm almost 100% positive this is not true. Uranium is an extremely radioactive and harmful substance, and I can't imagine how people travelling on passenger planes would be allowed to be exposed to it.

chaka

I've asked at a science forum I am a member at and I will post the answer here.  Alternatively you could check it out for yourself at

http://www.elmhurstsolutions.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?catselect=general

A quick Google search reveals that some aircraft use depleted uranium as ballast to counteract poor wing placement.

Opinions vary as to how dangerous depleted uranium is.  It has a very long half life which means it hangs around a long time but that might also mean it is not very radioactive.

A quick Google search reveals that some aircraft use depleted uranium as ballast to counteract poor wing placement.

Opinions vary as to how dangerous depleted uranium is.  It has a very long half life which means it hangs around a long time but that might also mean it is not very radioactive.


Hey, whaddya know? Looks like I was wrong.

I wouldn't take anything for granted when it comes to 9/11, such as it was a just a plain old plane that crashed into either tower.
Anyway...the people really getting sick from depleted Uranium are our soldiers in Iraq. There's going to be hell to pay over the next several decades.

Looks like it's true. Just read this article on depleted uranium:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Trim_weights_in_aircraft

It says that depleted uranium is used as a counter-weight in some aircraft and that there is concern that if the aircraft crashes, the uranium can escape and contaminate the environment.

Some aircraft use depleted uranium (U-238) for weight balancing purposes. 

Uranium is a chemical hazard (along the lines of lead) more than it is a radiological hazard.  (But because U-238 emits alpha particles, it can also be a radiological hazard if vaporized or powdered, and if the powder is inhaled in large quantities.  Alphas are big, heavy, and slow, and extremely easy to shield against.  A sheet of tissue paper will protect you.  You can hold an alpha source in your hand, and the thin layer of dead skin that makes up your epidermis will shield you.  Problem is, "big, heavy and slow" means that if you powder it (or its oxides) and inhale the dust for a prolonged period of time, you get it in your lungs -- and there's no dead skin there to protect you.  (And you've also got the chemical toxicity issue, which can also be a factor.)

It's quite plausible (but not certain) that some GWI and GW2 vets (and civilians in the combat zone) have been exposed to levels of DU that can have acute (and possibly longer-term) toxic effects.  It's possible (and less certain) that the radiological hazard is a factor.  Remember that if you have to fire 20 times as many non-DU shells on target to get the same effect as one DU round, you're probably going to kill more civilians due to collateral damage than would die of lung cancer 20 years from now.  An environmental protection guy would say that in an ideal universe, nobody would be firing any shells on any target -- but by the time the guns have started firing, it's no longer an ideal universe.  The question of whether or not to use DU in munitions is one of what to do in a non-ideal universe where someone is gonna die, and it's only a question of how many, and when.  To that end, DU munitions do a better job of minimizing civilian (and own-side military) casualties than steel or lead munitions.

It's exceedingly unlikely that health issues in downtown New York have anything to do with any DU that may or may not have been in use in the aircraft in question.

On 9/11, two 100-storey buildings (100 stories of asbestos and fiberglass insulation, thousands of windows worth of powdered glass, 300 tons of human flesh, 50000 motherboards' worth of lead-silver solder, 50000 CRTs worth of powdered leaded glass, a million fluorescent lamps' worth of mercury vapor and glass, and thousands of tons of plastics in the form of carpets, keyboards, cubicles, and office furniture, and the dioxins and furans associated with their burning) were powdered and aerosolized, and tens of thousands of people breathed the resulting brew for several months.  Ask anyone who lives in New York how long it stank at Ground Zero.

Compared to the likely health effects of breathing that, the presence or absence of a few thousand pounds of DU counterweights in civilian aircraft would be the least of my worries, and for good reason.

Compared to the likely health effects of breathing that, the presence or absence of a few thousand pounds of DU counterweights in civilian aircraft would be the least of my worries, and for good reason.


That's one of the very thinks I was thinking on 9/11. Nobody else seemed to notice it amid all the panic. "Oh my god, theyr'e breathing in all those toxic particles!" You're absolutely right, the pulverized glass alone was a much bigger danger. There are people dying right now of toxins they breathed that very day!

http://www.elmhurstsolutions.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1151415601/10#10

depleted uranium is an alpha emitter so it's only dangerous if you breathe it in.

Where does uranium come from..do you know you EAT a percentage with foods from THE GROUND?

That's why when the 'eco complainers on the nuke subject' raise their heads..they don't realize they already eat it!