BERLIN, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping said on Wednesday he was checking a German television report that depleted uranium munitions such as those used by NATO in the Balkans could contain deadly traces of plutonium. ARD public television"s current affairs show Monitor said it had obtained U.S. Defence Department documents noting the possibility of plutonium traces being found in its weapons. "This is a serious claim and we must take it seriously," Scharping told SWR Radio. "I have no information of my own on this claim and I launched measures yesterday evening to establish whether the Monitor story is correct," he said. NATO had said on Tuesday that its chief medical officers had seen nothing that pointed to a serious health risk from depleted uranium munitions used in the Gulf War and the Balkans. In extracts of a programme to be broadcast on Thursday, Monitor said the U.S. Pentagon had carried out a study from which it concluded that the depleted uranium supplied for its munitions could contain plutonium. Monitor quoted nuclear experts as saying this would substantially increase the radiation risk from used weapons. Because plutonium is created during nuclear power production, it likely came from faulty reprocessing of the spent nuclear fuel from which the depleted uranium was recovered, Monitor said. Scharping has been accused of not taking seriously enough the health risk to German peacekeepers following two weeks of controversy over cancer risks from depleted uranium arms. He was due to answer those accusations before a parliamentary committee later on Wednesday. The dispute over depleted uranium erupted in January as some countries suggested a connection between leukaemia and other diseases among young NATO soldiers who had served as peacekeepers in the former Yugoslavia.