[ RadSafe ] pyrophoric uranium considered nonessential

[James Salsman]

Alan Watts wrote:

>... If energy is needed for the ignition of that metal powder then
> pyrophoric conditions are not met.  [In] other words a static 
> state must be met to satisfy that condition.

"Uranium is a dense, lustrous metal that resembles iron. It is also 
ductile and malleable. In air it tarnishes quickly, and a freshly 
exposed surface becomes coated with a layer of dark oxide. When finely 
divided, the metal burns spontaneously in air (it is pyrophoric)."
-- http://genchem.chem.wisc.edu/lab/PTL/PTL/Elements/U/U_Descr.html

I look forward to the day when we can get past questions of general
properties that have been established for several decades, and on
to questions such as whether uranium contamination of the gonocytes
leads to accelerating or linear increases in the offspring congenital
malformation incident rate -- questions that for some reason, nobody
in the uranium industry or military has bothered to study yet.

That uranium accumulates in the testes and leads to birth defects
has been established as fact since the 1950s.  But does the
resulting birth defect incidence rate increase over time in an
accelerating fashion as it has been in Basrah?  Our armed forces
don't even bother to look; if they did, they would at the very
least break 1991 combat-deployed ODS veterans out in this report:
   http://www.bovik.org/du/mscusn/BIHR_annual_report_2000.pdf

Is no attempt is made to keep track of the exposed populations,
because, as Bob Cherry puts it, "alarming our soldiers and their
families," might lead to actual accountability for omission of
uranium trioxide detection in the safety studies he cited to the
NRC in 2000, and the resulting sickness of hundreds of thousands,
and an uncounted number of excess birth defects?

Sincerely,
James Salsman