Reuters: US to send depleted-uranium munitions to Ukraine

[COL Mustard]

75. There's never been a case of cancer attributed to DU.

It's less radioactive than the naturally occurring uranium that's in the environment. I worked on this at the end of the Clinton administration and there were US troops who'd been wounded by DU fragments during Desert Storm. It wasn't safe to remove the fragments, so the troops got monthly monitoring from the VA or from the Army, and while they had slightly elevated levels of radioactivity in their urine, there were no cases of cancer, of any type associated with DU munitions.

Additionally, DU is in fact a low level alpha radiation emitter. The alpha radiation can be stopped by something as thin as a sheet of paper. At the moment of impact, a DU penetrator does give off some gamma radiation, but you would need to be within about three feet of the point of impact to be affected by the gamma radiation. And frankly, if you're that close, you will have other significant problems to deal with.