UN agency finds plutonium traces in Kosovo ammo

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

UN agency finds plutonium traces in Kosovo ammo
  
GENEVA, Feb 16 (Reuters) - A United Nations agency said on Friday it 
had found minute traces of highly toxic plutonium at several sites in 
Kosovo but stressed they posed no health risk and there was no cause 
for alarm. 

"This is so small that there is no additional health risk," said Max 
Keller, who led the research at the AC Laboratory for nuclear and 
chemical warfare in Spiez, Switzerland. 

Keller compared the traces found to a kilo of sugar diluted in a 
Swiss mountain lake. "What is important here is the quantity," he 
said. 

The report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) follows 
a public outcry over the possible health risks of armour-piercing 
depleted uranium weapons used by NATO in the Balkans. 

About 40,000 depleted uranium rounds were fired in Bosnia and Kosovo, 
all by U.S. ground attack aircraft. 

UNEP inspected sites in Kosovo in November, together with the 
International Atomic Energy Agency, collecting 340 samples of soil, 
water and vegetation and conducting smear tests on buildings and 
destroyed Yugoslav army vehicles. 

UNEP said both the Spiez laboratory and the Swedish Radiation 
Protection Institute had found traces of plutonium 239/240 in four 
different samples. 

In January UNEP announced that it had found traces of the enriched 
uranium U-236, created during processing in nuclear power plants. 

"According to an assessment by the Swiss AC-Laboratory Speiz, these 
newest findings about the composition of the depleted uranium only 
lead to a minor change in the overall radiological situation and 
should therefore not cause any immediate alarm," UNEP executive 
director Klaus Toepfler said. 

UNEP will publish a full report in early March. 

The United States said in January that it had traced the source of 
the plutonium in the ammunition to U.S factories that produced the 
ammunition over a period of two decades between the 1950s and 1970s. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandy Perle					Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100   				    	
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Personal Website: http://sandyfl.nukeworker.net
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