The research and writing were top-notch, but I got dinged for my tardiness. In the end, I turned my paper in late and got a B. Internet research was so new that citing hyperlinks wasn’t in my style manual. And even after I found the information, I was unsure how to cite it. There I spent a good hour or two finding information on depleted uranium for my essay. I logged on to one of two Internet-enabled machines and surfed the primitive World Wide Web. It was the Wild West of online connectivity, something that nobody had in their home. But the Internet had this allure to it that AOL lacked. Moreover, I had experience using Bulletin Board Systems and AOL. I had tried it a year earlier in my Gifted and Talented Program. It wasn’t my first time using the Internet. The librarian suggested that I try the Internet. So I went back to the library to see what I could do. He nodded and said that he gave me the hardest topic since he knew I could do it. (I had several weeks to work on it, but I didn’t start until a couple of days before.) So I went whining to my physics teacher, complaining that my topic was harder than the other kids’ topics. However, it would take a week to get it, and my report was due in two days. The school librarian found a relevant book halfway across the state. Back then, I couldn’t find anything in the school library about depleted uranium. I just Googled it and voila! This was not the case in 1996. It took just ten minutes to research depleted uranium for this blog post. Experts disagree on the lasting effects of DU usage in warfare, but I think we can safely say that there are no health benefits and plenty of detriments. Its use in the First Gulf War is controversial, with varying claims about health effects upon both US Soldiers and native Iraqis. However, depleted uranium is denser than lead, making it ideal for armor and ammunition. So you probably wouldn’t want to go making baby toys out of it. Depleted uranium (DU), a byproduct of nuclear enrichment, is almost entirely U-238.ĭU isn’t radioactive enough for nuclear weapons and power plants, but it still slightly radioactive, as well as toxic. The rest is mostly the non-fissionable Uranium-238. Natural uranium ore is 0.73% Uranium-235, a fissionable material used to make atomic bombs and power nuclear power plants. In case you’re not familiar with the concept (I wasn’t), depleted uranium is uranium ore that has had most of the fissionable material removed. My assigned topic was a little more obscure, however. Most of these were what you would expect: Chernobyl, the Manhattan Project, Yucca Mountain, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, etc. For our final project, our teacher assigned a range of essay topics about radiation and nuclear physics. In my 10th grade physics class, we spent a good chunk of the spring semester talking about radioactivity.
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