rescuecomm
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Is DU considered radioactive materials?
Military aircraft crash in Imperial County, CA. It was carrying nuclear material.
- Thread starter GlobalNorth
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It generally is and of course has been used for weight balancing in some aircraft but I still think radioactive Sr-90 in an IBIS system is more/also likely. For similar, see:
Going through the scanner archives I found the mention of "nuclear materials" and did some research. What I heard is one first responder talking to another and telling him "be careful of the rotors - they contain nuclear materials." The V-22 osprey is built in my hometown and so I asked a friend who works at the Bell plant here. He says many helicopter rotors (and quite possibly the Osprey (not confirmed) use depleted uranium weights on the rotor tips to balance them. This is most likely where the nuclear report came in and was misunderstood by those who first heard it.
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IBIS system (to detect blade failure) with radioactive Strontium-90 in rotors on some aircraft presents a problem.
Boeing quit using uranium weights in 1979 due to the depleted uranium controversy and replaced most. I do not know about Bell.
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