By Chris Bellamy
28 October 2006 The Independent
The initial tests on samples taken from the site of the Israeli strike on Khiam present an enigma which will only be solved when the people who produced and deployed the weapon explain themselves. Speculation that the device was some form of “dirty bomb” or micro-yield nuclear weapon can probably be dismissed. The radiation levels and the amount of Uranium-235 in the sample clearly indicate that it was not a nuclear fission weapon.
Uranium has been widely used in conventional weapons – and on the battlefield – for the past 30 years, for three reasons. Firstly, uranium is very dense – 70 per cent denser than lead. Therefore, a smaller projectile delivers more kinetic energy, making it ideal for armour-piercing shot. Secondly, it is pyrophoric, which means that when slammed into a target at high speed it liquefies and ignites spontaneously. Thirdly, the type of uranium most widely used in weapons, depleted uranium (DU), is plentiful. It is a by-product of uranium enrichment, which produces the fuel for nuclear power stations and nuclear weapons. Because there is so much of it about, it makes sense for those who have it to turn DU into armour-piercing munitions.
The only logical military reason for the presence of traces of uranium, of any kind, would be the use of that element to make a hard, dense penetrator for an armour-piercing or “bunker-busting” device. Natural uranium consists of three isotopes – Uranium-238 (99.27 per cent), U-235 – the crucial component of fissionable material (0.72 per cent) and U-234 (0.0054 per cent). To make the fuel for a nuclear reactor this needs to be enriched to three or four per cent U-235, and the resulting waste product, with only 0.25 per cent U-235 and 99.8 per cent U-238, is DU. To make a bomb you would need up to 90 per cent U-235 – hence the concern about Iran’s uranium enrichment programme.
The Khiam sample, with 108 parts U-238 to one of U-235 – just under one per cent – is clearly enriched – but not much. So, in the absence of any palpable military advantage, in terms of its mass and its ability to generate heat and fire compared with DU or natural uranium, why was this enigmatic material used? There are several possibilities. The first is that there was a simple mistake – that uranium with an elevated U-235 content was used instead of DU or natural uranium. The Khiam sample was very small – 25 grams. Contamination with soil could easily obscure a higher degree of enrichment. Spent nuclear fuel – after the power has been generated – typically contains 2.5 per cent U-235, but it can be as low as 1.5 per cent – close to the Khiam sample level. So the uranium in the Khiam projectile could just have been spent nuclear fuel.
One way to dispose of enriched uranium safely is to blend it with natural uranium, in such a way that the U-235 is extremely difficult to re-extract. That might well produce a substance with just under one per cent U-235, which was a component of the Israeli Khiam bomb.
It is also uncertain whether the munition was made in the US or by the Israelis themselves. If the Israelis or the Americans want to avoid accusations, at the very least, of a cavalier attitude to the use of nuclear waste products, they need to explain what was in that bomb and why it was there.
Chris Bellamy is professor of military science and doctrine at Cranfield University
Related: Robert Fisk: Mystery of Israel’s secret uranium bomb
IDF denies using uranium-based warheads during war in Lebanon
By Meron Rapoport, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
Israel did not use uranium-based warheads during the Lebanon war, the army spokesperson’s office said Saturday. The announcement was made in response to a report published Saturday on the website of the British newspaper The Independent.
The newspaper reported that studies carried out by a European Union-affiliated organization suggest the Israel Air Force used experimental missiles employing uranium against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Saturday that “all the arms and ammunition that we use are legal and conform to international laws.”
Boutros al-Harb, director of the United Nations Environment Program for Asia and the Middle East said Saturday that his organization is unable to confirm or deny the report.
“If uranium was used, we will find out and will announce it,” he said. “We cannot confirm anything now, but we will wait for the results.”
Twenty experts within the organization examined in recent weeks the environmental effects of the Lebanon war, and will release their results in mid-December, al-Harb said.
According to the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, Doctor Chris Busby, tests carried out on soil taken from craters where Israeli missiles impacted showed ‘elevated radiation signatures.’
Busby’s report concluded that such results could be caused either by bunker-busting conventional bombs using uranium or a new kind of weapon bearing a “novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash.”
An Italian television report aired last week made a similar claim, raising the possibility that Israel had used a weapon in the Gaza Strip in recent months, causing especially serious physical injuries, such as amputated limbs and severe burns.
The report claimed the weapon is similar to one developed by the U.S. military, known as DIME, which causes a powerful and lethal blast, but only within a relatively small radius.
The Italian report is based on the eyewitness accounts of medical doctors in the Strip, as well as tests carried out in an Italian laboratory. The investigative team is the same one that exposed, several months ago, the use by U.S. forces in Iraq of phosphorous bombs, against Iraqi rebels in Faluja.
Israel Air Force Maj.-Gen (res.) Yitzhak Ben-Israel, formerly head of the IDF’s weapons-development program, told the Italian reporters that “one of the ideas [behind the weapon] is to allow those targeted to be hit without causing damage to bystanders or other persons.”
The investigation, by Rai24news, follows reports by Gaza-based doctors of inexplicably serious injuries. The doctors reported an exceptionally large number of wounded who lost legs, of completely burned bodies and injuries unaccompanied by metal shrapnel. Some of the doctors also claimed that they removed particles from wounds that could not be seen in an x-ray machine.
According to those who testified, the wounded were hit by munitions launched from drones, most of them in July.
Dr. Habas al-Wahid, head of the emergency room at the Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital, in Deir el-Balah, told the reporters that the legs of the injured were sliced from their bodies “as if a saw was used to cut through the bone.” There were signs of heat and burns near the point of the amputation, but no signs that the dismemberment was caused by metal fragments.
Dr. Juma Saka, of Shifa Hospital, in Gaza City, said the doctors found small entry wounds on the bodies of the wounded and the dead. According to Saka, a powder was found on the victims’ bodies and in their internal organs.
“The powder was like microscopic shrapnel, and these are what likely caused the injuries,” Saka said.
The Italian investigative team raised the possibility that the IDF is making use of a weapon similar in character to DIME – Dense Inert Metal Explosive – developed for the U.S. military. According to the official website of a U.S. air force laboratory, it is a “focused lethality” weapon, which aims to accurately destroy the target while causing minimum damage to the surrounding.
According to the site, the projectile comprises a carbon-fiber casing filled with tungsten powder and explosives. In the explosion, tungsten particles – a metal capable of conducting very high temperatures – spread over a radius of four meters and cause death.
According to the U.S.-based website Defense-Tech, “the result is an incredibly destructive blast in a small area” and “the destructive power of the mixture causes far more damage than pure explosive.” It adds that “the impact of the micro-shrapnel seems to cause a similar but more powerful effect than a shockwave.”
The weapon is supposed to still be in the testing phase and has not been used on the battlefield.
The Italian reporters sent samples of the particles found in wounds of injured in the Gaza Strip to a laboratory at the University of Parma. Dr. Carmela Vaccaio said that in analyzing the samples, she found “a very high concentration of carbon and the presence of unusual materials,” such as copper, aluminum and tungsten. Dr. Vaccaio says these findings “could be in line with the hypothesis” that the weapon in question is DIME.
On the matter of DIME, Ben-Israel told the Italian reporters that “this is a technology that allows the striking of very small targets.”
The report says that the weapon is not banned by international law, especially since it has not been officially tested.
It is believed that the weapon is highly carcinogenic and harmful to the environment.
The non-governmental organization Physicians for Human Rights has written to Defense Minister Amir Peretz requesting explanations for the aforementioned injuries to Palestinians. Amos Gilad, a senior adviser to the minister, is supposed to meet with the group on the matter in the near future.