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Via Workers World News Service
Reprintedfrom the Sept. 26, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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[Dr. Michio Kaku, nuclear physicist, author and commentator on WBAIradio in New York]
We now shoot nuclear wastes into other people's backyards. We're talkingabout laying the groundwork for an investigation into war crimes againstordinary people.
Now we have hundreds of millions of tons of nuclear waste tailings, all ofwhich goes into the nuclear-fuel cycle and winds up as depleted uranium-DU.
Waste uranium is unusually heavy--1.7 times denser than lead. Its half-lifeis 4.4 billion years, the age of the solar system. It will burn, and canspontaneously start burning if machined in contact with air. We get 70 percentaerosolization when shells impact.
There's one thing more powerful than a hydrogen bomb. That's the power of apeople united, the power of a people educated, the power of a people enragedthat this obscenity is committed against other people.
I believe this battle is winnable. When the American people realize that weare shooting nuclear wastes into other people's backyard, poisoning our veryown, inflicting innumerable casualties on other people, then I think theAmerican people will rise, and we will see the day when nations beat our DUswords into plowshares.
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