This is deadly serious stuff but a flashy vid like this explains the science very poorly. I'm not trying to let the military off the hook, far from it. But to my mind critics of this lethal legacy are likely to be rubbished by politicians and media for not knowing their facts properly. I'll try and explain as simply as I can.

Firstly "nuclear waste" is a very loaded description for DU. In fact DU is NOT actually "nuclear waste" in the traditional sense. A much more accurate description would be that it's surplus from the nuclear industry. This stuff has never been anywhere near a nuclear reactor because it's the stuff that's been rejected for not being radioactive enough. Uranium dug from the ground contains two different forms or isotopes. The U 238 isotope makes up 99.25% and the U 235 isotope makes up just 0.75%. It's the U 235 - the rarer stuff - that is wanted for bombs and reactors since it's sufficiently radioactive that only a few kilograms of this are needed to achieve critical mass and then - away you go. In fact the U 238 was at one time packed around the outside of fast breeder reactors in order to "breed" more fuel but not any more as far as I know. So to make your nuke bomb or reactor core the U 235 has to be separated from the majority U 238 involving an immensely costly, lengthy and energy intensive enrichment process using centrifuges or gaseous diffusion. This is what the Iranians are suspected to be up to. Because the physical properties of the two isotopes are so very similar, it's never economic to extract all the U 235 from the U 238 - they normally give up after extracting just 50% or so. As a result of all this enrichment there are hundreds of tons of this "depleted uranium" - uranium that contains less than the naturally occurring level of 0.75% U 235 - stored around the world that until relatively recently, no one could think of a use for.

Then the US military realised that uranium is far heavier than lead and comparably hard as tungsten but significantly cheaper than that metal that's been traditionally used for piercing battlefield armour. Uranium is surprisingly common on earth - more abundant than silver, mercury or cadmium:
 http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/U/geol.html
It's because of this great hardness and weight that it's seen as ideal for making shells and bullets that can punch holes right through military armour on tanks etc. Oh, and it's radioactive but the shameless military of course don't care a toss about that little side effect.

In fact it's only "mildly radioactive". The U 238 half life of a very long 4.5 billion years means that after that period of time, half of the original material will have been lost by emitting radiation - a process called radioactive decay. So after 9 bn yrs, 1/4 will remain, 18 bn yrs 1/8 etc. So don't for a moment think that after exactly 4.5 bn yrs everything is safe as all the material is gone. It's never all gone, it just continues to diminish slowly - for ever. This stuff will outlast the earth by a long way. Remember too that the DU still contains a smaller proportion of the more radioactive U 235. This being more radioactive, it has a shorter half life of 700 million years.
 http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/U/radio.html
Compare these colossal time scales to the far more deadly and more radioactive Caesium 137 with a half life of just 30 years that is spewed out by nuke bombs and reactors like Chernobyl. It emits radioactivity at a fast and furious rate by comparison. You wouldn't want to get too close to that stuff.
 http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Cs/radio.html
The radioactivity DU emits is in the form of alpha particles which have a very limited range. They are stopped by just a few inches of air or a sheet of paper or they'll be stopped on the very surface of your skin.

So this is why in the solid form DU is not considered that much of a health risk. The seriously deadly effects come about because when a uranium shell travelling at supersonic speeds impacts, it atomises and burns to an incredibly fine dust of uranium oxide that's too fine to be stopped by a gas mask. It can then be blown all over the world - many countries experienced dramatically increased radiation levels within days of "shock and awe". Being so fine these particles of mildly radioactive dust can easily enter the body, for instance lodging in the lungs of Iraqi kids playing amongst bombed out tanks. Here the alpha particles can do far far more harm as they are then being emitted right in amongst the body's cells zapping the DNA at extremely close quarters.

Uh....why was it that they hate us.....Mr. President?

Because you have the "FREEDOM" to violate global conventions......pre-emptive war, the use of nuclear weapons, the treatment of prisoners?

Sorry Mr. President.....you are wrong......very, very, VERY WRONG!!!!!

The Supreme Court has acknowledged, so far, that you are a war criminal on one of these issues.....and that was after planting two of your neo-con judges to the court. Good luck Georgie.

I recognise you from your aersol / gas argument. That is a fine post, you have obviously made yourself aware of the science behind DU toxicity since I last argued with you.

In turn, I checked out Nichols / Meuret posters. They are indeed Larouchies, cult members recruiting in the UK. Thanks for pointing that out a few months ago.

and I didn't learn this stuff since whenever you claimed I argued with you. I just have a detestation of pseudo science.

Fair enough, I thought you were Sceptic simply because they had the same quibble here with someone else when they called a DU particulate aerosol a gas. Although you do seem better informed than him.

You say 'many countries experienced dramatically increased radiation levels within days of "shock and awe"' and I don't doubt that, but do you have any links that prove that point apart from the readings Chris Busby got released from Aldermaston ?