jetcloud

RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY: "...each Boeing 747 jumbo-jet requires about 1500 pounds of ballast (or counterweights), and as many as 15,000 DU weights were manufactured for this purpose. In recent years, DU has been replaced by tungsten in aircraft ballast, perhaps to avoid questions about the wisdom of flying radioactive materials around in planes. A plane that crashed into a row of apartments in Amsterdam in 1992 was carrying 282 kg (620 pounds) of DU as ballast, and a Boeing-747 that crashed in England in 2000 was carrying 1500 kg (3,300 pounds) of DU."