HEU: ANCIENT WISDOM, MODERN LESSONS

Frances Letters, Australia, Mar 18, 2024

On 15 March Pearls and Irritations published an article by Sue Wareham entitled “AUKUS: risks, risks and more risks”.

The proposed AUKUS submarines, she declares, “undermine efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons because they will be powered by weapons grade highly-enriched uranium (HEU), which is nuclear bomb fuel.”

HEU: Highly Enriched Uranium. Three letters casually typed into scientific or military reports anywhere in the world these days.

But in fact the acronym would gain much valuable significance from one quick addition: a simple exclamation mark.

“HEU!” Latin literature records that many a Roman gasped out the word, tearful face contorted with grief and terror. War, in particular, fostered a rich crop of the word.

“Alas!”

With almost preternatural portent, often the tragic word is even recorded in Latin as “EHEU”. Extraordinarily Highly Enriched Uranium.

Stranger still, might it not be mysteriously appropriate if the Romans had in their soldierly wisom forseen yet another glorious event? And joyfully recorded their vernacular reaction it? The coming of AUKUS to our undiscovered southern shores?

“EUGEPAE!” the legions must have cheered ecstatically at the thought. Enriched Uranium Gargantually Engineered Precisely for Atomic Extermination!

“Hooray!”

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