-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Sept. 26, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

Michio Kaku: Nuclear waste in others' yards

[Dr. Michio Kaku, nuclear physicist, author and commentator on WBAI radio in New York]

We now shoot nuclear wastes into other people's backyards. We're talking about laying the groundwork for an investigation into war crimes against ordinary people.

Now we have hundreds of millions of tons of nuclear waste tailings, all of which 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-life is 4.4 billion years, the age of the solar system. It will burn, and can spontaneously start burning if machined in contact with air. We get 70 percent aerosolization when shells impact.

There's one thing more powerful than a hydrogen bomb. That's the power of a people united, the power of a people educated, the power of a people enraged that this obscenity is committed against other people.

I believe this battle is winnable. When the American people realize that we are shooting nuclear wastes into other people's backyard, poisoning our very own, inflicting innumerable casualties on other people, then I think the American people will rise, and we will see the day when nations beat our DU swords into plowshares.

- END -

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@wwpublish.com. For subscription info send message to: ww-info@wwpublish.com. Web: http://www.workers.org)

Copyright © 1996 workers.org