The debate over the need for a metal standard is not the point of this article. Currency is spontaneous. Barter is always available. Currency… in its established fiat design, is laying power in a certain number of hands, that may change its value by indirect levers, yet the market creates pull forces and over the last 40 years a relative equilibrium has emerged, except for goods that might not have been worth it actually. Let’s take the US housing market for instance: its boom in the 2000s was supported by the wars abroad that created an artificial feeling of comfort in American buyers. The depleted uranium use in these wars has eventually wrecked more or less these wars (Afghanistan 100% – Iraq is holding with difficulties and thanks to the beginning of cleaning with magnets pulled by Air Force planes competing with the IRGC’s magnets…). The Afghanistan debacle is a direct consequence of DU use in this war. Perhaps was it “to destroy poppy fields”. Perhaps. But it’s a tremendous disaster. Why am I saying “not worth it actually”? I don’t know but I am thinking of the Brunswick nuclear accident that has sprayed a significant part of where the market boomed before – some might see the constant mismanagement of US private nuclear reactors as a counterpart to the fact it’s a colonial country in nature. This is a point I can take the risk to defend. The “latifundist” way of life actually. Especially as the nuclear accidents always happen in the South. (Brunswick stands out but is not alone)

So,

The definition of a currency relies on :

• Easy portability
• Easiness to divide in smaller pieces (smaller portions)
• Large acceptance by sellers

Intrinsic value is a debatable concept. Of course. We know this since Carl Menger.

Depleted uranium is highly carcinogenic, teratogenic etc. when inhalated, ingested… (see my full list of peer reviewed articles on this through florentpirot.blog/publi) but presents a high value when recycled in nuclear reactors for plutonium 239. With for instance this concept it can be recycled easily and in good conditions without criticity into electricity production. Subcritical reactors are intrinsically safe and reliable. Nuclear fusion devices also allow recycling with their very fast neutrons in an even more flexible and efficient way, it’s their only useful use actually.

DU is a tender metal, easy to cut in small pieces (even more ductile than gold). It’s easily recognizable (more than gold) too. Its intrinsic energy gives it a face value. The market also represents a natural deterrence against terrorists longing for bombs because with a stable market for DU, the high price (that should be, hence, higher than gold ! U238’s qualities are related to its atomic mass, as gold’s qualities are.) is in itself a barrier. The DU could be carried in small hermetic boxes, that are enough to shield the alpha decay.

This article is solely theoretical. A metallic money has defects. DU is certainly more valuable than gold. But we don’t use gold anymore as currency for some reasons that include the dematerialization of exchanges. And in that DU has no more assets than gold, it’s nevertheless interesting to look at interstate exchanges of depleted uranium in the perspective of banking. The security around depleted uranium repositories is of course another “price”. Nevertheless dematerialized exchanges need energy and for this too, there’s depleted uranium.