Bratoselce clean-up completed (of NATO DU)

Serbian Government ^ | November 10, 2003

[joan]

Bujanovac, Nov 10, 2003 - The clean-up of some 5,000 square meters of land in the village of Bratoselce near Bujanovac, contaminated by depleted uranium during the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, was finished on Sunday.

Serbian Minister of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Andjelka Mihajlov and Serbia-Montenegrin Army Chief of Staff General Branko Krga visited the site upon the completion of the works, expressing satisfaction with the cooperation between the ministry, the army, and the Vinca institute of nuclear sciences during this task.

During the clean-up, the team performing the task discovered around 100 kilograms of depleted uranium in the soil and stored some 2.5 tons of contaminated earth in the Vinca institute's facilities.

Mihajlov said that Bratoselce is the first contaminated site in Serbia that has been cleaned up and added that the efficiency of the work was higher than 95 percent. She expressed that hope that the clean-up of the remaining three sites, Pljackovica, Reljan, and Borovac, will begin next year.

The Serbian government funded the project with 15 million dinars.

[joan]

Where's any aid from NATO or the UN to fund this cleanup?

[JoeFromSidney]

Hope they saved the stuff. Some day they'll need it in breeder reactors. And we'll be wishing we hadn't thrown it away like that.

[joan]

I'm sure Serbs would let NATO countries take it away freely if those countries transported it on their own cost. Why don't you write your government - Australia? - and tell them they could probably get this valuable DU for free?

Funny that the NATO countries don't seem to be removing it from Kosovo, which they have control over, and taking it back home. Instead the areas of the depleted uranium in Kosovo are fenced or roped off with the DU sitting there untouched to this day. That is, unless you have info, that they are doing otherwise.

[mark502inf]

Joan, I've been around lots of DU munitions over the past 10 years or so--both before they've been fired and then in places where DU munitions have hit (or missed!) targets. In that time, I've noticed that my hair has gone completely gray, I've gained some weight, my knees are creaky, and my eyes are having problems reading things close up; so I'm thinking of suing the government.

Try this link for a synopsis of a few U.S. studies: http://deploymentlink.osd.mil/du_library/du_ii/index.htm<

[JoeFromSidney]

I'm sure Serbs would let NATO countries take it away freely if those countries transported it on their own cost. Why don't you write your government - Australia? - and tell them they could probably get this valuable DU for free?

Funny that the NATO countries don't seem to be removing it from Kosovo, which they have control over, and taking it back home. Instead the areas of the depleted uranium in Kosovo are fenced or roped off with the DU sitting there untouched to this day. That is, unless you have info, that they are doing otherwise.

The problem is, we treat it as though it were a waste product, when in fact it's the raw material for making plutonium. We have tons of the stuff, and treat it in a very short-sighted manner. Eventually the world is going to need the plutonium for power plants.