Was Russia's claims of Ukraine using 'dirty bombs' even plausible?

So as you may have heard, the UK MoD has sent Ukraine depleted Uranium ammo. It's basically Uranium metal (see link below for how you can make it). Would this even be a decent isotope for such a weapon? Because I know some elements won't do nothing.

https://archive.org/details/393b-912836881f-0a-6ea-8ac-599001c-452b-46ec-6bdb-36179eb-3bcba-0c-4ac-3228d-9

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  1. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    > UK MoD has sent Ukraine depleted Uranium ammo.
    All that is the usual moscow shittalking. Russia also has AP(DSFS) DU ammo.

  2. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    >digs up the red forrest

  3. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    > Would this even be a decent isotope for such a weapon?
    >would the material that is explicitly not radioactive be useful in a weapon that’s meant to spread radioactivity?

    I dunno, you tell me. You blithering idiot

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >material that is explicitly not radioactive
      it's still radioactive you moron

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        The key word of depleted uranium is DEPLETED. any radiation it emits is extremely low and not much of a hazard in most situations.

        Dozens of materials within arms length of you is radioactive in many ways. Many elements INSIDE your body are radioactive to a degree. What matters is how much material is there and to what degree they are radioactive.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          it has 60% radioactivity it's not "depleted" moron

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            depleted uranium has 60% radioactivity
            if you can make a dirty bomb from uranium you can make one from DU

            It has <50% the activity of natural uranium, or about two to three orders of magnitude less radioactivity compared to the high enriched uranium (or plutonium) used to make nuclear weapons.

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            And you fail to realize that depleted uranium is made with whats left from the enrichment/refining process for other uses of uranium and contains the least radioactive parts of those materials. What it emits is harmless unless you fricking swallow it. You arent going to fricking erupt into blisters holding it and even if you DO ingest it the side effects take weeks months or even YEARS to appear. Its not a fricking problem and isnt a goddamn weapon. Its no more dangerous than fricking lead and you arent all crying about poison bullets.

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              >you arent all crying about poison bullets.
              Russians will next. Stop aiding the enemy you trator!

  4. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    youre a moronic Black person. Ukraine has like 4 nuclear power stations they'd use that instead of grinding up depleted uranium tank shells

  5. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    The only hazard from depleted uranium is heavy metal toxicity. A trait shared with lead.

  6. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    you need a breeder reactor to enrich uranium you dumb fricking Black person.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Breeder? But I hardly know ‘er!

  7. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    after russian hijinks around chernobyl, DU rounds in ukraine is like a guy pissing into an ocean.

  8. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    >Was Russia's claims of Ukraine using 'dirty bombs' even plausible?
    you don't want to inhale uranium dust

  9. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    To be totaly pedantic a DU sabot is in-fact radioactive and does in-fact create radioactive dust upon use from the mechanism that makes DU useful as a penetrator but the levels are so low and the material properties so useful that literally no one in any form of power to have them gives a frick
    But it is NOT a patch on something like cobalt or whatever the frick DU will only dose with radiation if you inhale the dust given off by the penetrator after it impacts a target or I don’t know grind one of them up and fill a fat line

  10. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Why is this a big deal? Is it normal for a military to wash their bombs before dropping them? Why is hygiene so important?

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >Why is hygiene so important?
      Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Wash your hands.

  11. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    moron here. What is the tactical advantage of using radioactive rounds outside of fricking up environment or as explosive element?

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      It's just dense like tungsten, but self sharpens by shattering near the tip on contact sliding past the following uranium instead of forming a blob in the front like tungsten or steel.
      It's not really all that radioactive either.

  12. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    DU is an alpha emitter which is why it fricked up kids that played in dead tanks and inhaled the dust. Alpha emitters make terrible dirty bombs because a paper mask and googles will keep you safe.

  13. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    What even is the point of a dirty bomb for military use?
    I get the danger of one being used by a terrorist in a city, because people live there and you'd have to evacuate a whole bunch whilst you clean it up, but does it really do anything better than a normal bomb if your fighting over ruins or against some random trench is Bumfrick, Nowhere?
    It just seems like a really convoluted and expensive way to achieve the same as you could with just spending all that time and effort in making more conventional bombs.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      It's the ultimate minefield of impassible land, if WW3 kicked off we would see them used to restrict movement.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      You can make large areas (somewhat) uninhabitable for very cheap, depending on what you have.
      For countries like Ukraine and Russia that have nuclear power, they already have enough radioactive waste to make the poor mans dirty bomb for cheap.

      It's the ultimate minefield of impassible land, if WW3 kicked off we would see them used to restrict movement.

      Its never going to be impassible. Even if you took all the spent nuclear fuel in the world now and spread it homogeneously over an area such that anyone coming through that area would experience acute radiation dose, the area would not be very large. You have to wear a particulate mask and you can't drink the water, but you can certainly drive an armoured division through.
      It's more about making an area unlivable - think the area around Chernobyl but a bit more active. Basically 'you can travel through here but every extra hour you spend increases your chances of getting cancer in 30 years by 0.05%'.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Think about the logistics of every vehicle passing through needing to be NBC rated.
        The tanks and IFVs roll on through but what about the trucks with their fuel, food and ammo? What about the FOBs that arty fire from?
        In theory it could be done but it would be huge clusterfrick and after day 3 in an alpha rich enviroment plenty of grunts are going to start getting sick because they touched their sleeve while having lunch.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          I agree that it is a mess, but mech inf or armour can drive pretty far in a go if they really have to.

          If you are talking about using dirty bombs to cover an even wider/longer area, then either the cost goes up (need exponentially more radioactive weapons), the activity goes down (same amount of radionuclides spread over a larger area), or a combination of the two. Making a whole corridor of land impassible to a depth that can't be driven through on a tank of gas or two is almost impossible, unless there is already a maximally defensible natural chokepoint.

          Making dirty bombs isn't rocket science, there physical limits to how much you can do. Unless you are delivering a huge amount of radionuclide load per square mile (or square km, if you prefer), it won't last forever. Sure it will absolutely wreck all the existing flora and fauna for a few years, the air quality downwind will take a big hit, and the water quality downstream and underground will be wrecked for a long time.
          But after the first rainfall or two the air will be much cleaner and the dust will be soaking into the ground. After a few months most of the worst particulate stuff will be neutralized, and the only change will be that the background radiation will be noticeably higher. Natural processes will tend to 'clean up' parts of the area (which will concentrate radionuclides in certain places, but leave others passable or even livable)
          As we have seen in Chernobyl, nature can take some radiation. It's more of a problem for long-lived species like humans.

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            I'm thinking more along the lines of really treating it like a minefield, cover the far side and try to keep the enemy stuck inside it.
            I get that there isn't going to be a clean edge but if you can rotate guys in and out over safe ground to keep the enemy stuck in the zone they aren't going to have a good time.

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              That kind of defense would be more effective, as long as nothing that you care about is down-wind or downriver.
              You would also need natural barriers or some other deterrent to prevent the opposing force simply rolling around the dirty zone.

              Thinking about the geography of Russia/Ukraine it would be rough - the best places to use it would be areas near rivers and population centers where we hope no one ever uses nukes. The plains and steppe territory is a problem because of the 'just drive around it' problem.
              In a place like Afghanistan or Iran with lots of mountain ranges you could get a lot more bang for your buck using dirty bombs for area denial, and an added benefit is that it is a dryer and more remote climate (less collateral).
              Fingers crossed that it never happens anywhere 🙂

  14. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    DU is basically useless for a dirty bomb, and its deleterious effects are caused by thirdies slurping heavy metal out of river and well water. Oh, and by their constant inbreeding. DU is more of a problem for crews due to dust inhalation.

    Dirty bombs make no sense for Ukrainian troops to use, since they intend to re-claim and use these lands. If Ukraine is going to use chemical or radiological weapons, they'll be targeted at Russian civilian centers (and how funny that would be!). But this isn't going to happen, it's just Russians desperately fishing for a narrative.

  15. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    and what the frick happened to the battle mosquitoes?

    https://press.un.org/en/2022/sc15084.doc.htm

  16. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    depleted uranium has 60% radioactivity
    if you can make a dirty bomb from uranium you can make one from DU

  17. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Implausible.

    But why did they make the claim? Did they just copy moron dubya propaganda because it worked back in the 00s? Or is this to muddy the waters for using a tactical nuke?

    At the time I half expected that they had some russian soldiers with convenient radiation poisoning from licking the Elephant's Foot

  18. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    https://www.epa.gov/radtown/depleted-uranium
    >DU mainly emits alpha particle radiation. Alpha particles don't have enough energy to go through skin. As a result, exposure to the outside of the body is not considered a serious hazard
    >if DU is ingested or inhaled, it is a serious health hazard
    >Depleted uranium is both a toxic chemical and radiation health hazard when inside the body.
    https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_layman/depleted-uranium/en/l-2/4.htm
    >Depletion of U-235 during processing leaves DU appreciably less radioactive than naturally occurring isotopic mixtures. It typically contains 30-40 per cent of the concentration of U-235 found in natural uranium, or about 0.2 to 0.3 per cent by weight. This means that the radioactivity of newly produced DU is only about 60 per cent of natural uranium.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >This means that the radioactivity of newly produced DU is only about 60 per cent of natural uranium.

      Which translates to it gives frick all and isnt worth worrying about. The only reason uranium is a viable fissile material in bombs and reactors is because it is HEAVILY processed. DU has less of the highly reactive forms than even naturally occurring uranium does.

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