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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries

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To: energyplay who wrote (63710)	5/10/2005 8:45:35 AM
From: Slagle	Read Replies (1) of 74559

energyplay, Re: DU. Depeleted Uranium is a kinetic energy weapon of the old fashioned variety like a rifle bullet or cannon ball. The kinetic energy possessed by and hence the ability to cause damage is proportional to the mass times the velocity of the projectile squared and so it behooves you to have a massive fast moving projectile, hence lead bullets and the streamlined shape. DU like naval ordanance or 100 years ago is made to destroy and pierce armor and not for use against soft object like people. Piercing armor is a complicated business. 100 years ago naval engineers learned the best way to pierce armor is with a shell with a soft iron leading surface followed by hard steel inner part. Upon striking armor plate the outer soft iron glows red and melts and softens the plate so that the inner hard projectile can pierce. Something like this is at work with DU. The uranium is very dense, denser than lead and when properly formulated can produce an alloy that is both very hard and tough but also very dense and very heavy. You can alloy steel with lead, indeed it is the best machining metal there is but if you add enough lead to increase the density very much it becomes very soft, too soft to be of use as a projectile capable of piercing the hardened steel armor of a modern tank. The DU alloy apparently does the trick. When a DU projectile hits a tank you get the red glow as the projectile melts the armor, just like on battleships of 100 years ago. And it also gives the government a use for the vast stockpiles of the stuff sitting around at the Savannah River Plant and elsewhere. The problem is that when the projectile burns it way through a tanks armor it releases the uranium in a fine powder into the surroundings and the stuff is toxic and radioactive with a long halflife. There is a bigg hubbub going on about how dangerous this is but it does seem to me that the use of DU has been totally unnecessary. If were had been in some real slugging match with Sadams tanks it might be a different matter. It is a puzzle, its use I mean. Slagle

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