Attention scrappers! Be careful!!

25 or some ago, corrugated rod mill purchased radioactive steel from the US. Resulted in hundreds of cancer cases, you could see the people with geiger counters in strange to us suites, we called them ET suites as they looked like those in the ET movie, walking into all construction erected in the period, over 600 of them demolished. This happened in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Thanks to corrupted junk brokers. We did not have nuke plants then, still have only one in the whole country. And it will happen again, continues to happen with PCB's in old transformers junked and sold as steel.
 
I have two functioning geiger counters. One was a Naval surplus unit for $50 from ebay and the other was a DIY electronics kit from Electronics Goldmine for $29.

My wife and neighbors no doubt think I'm crazy, and will continue to do so - until one of those things starts chattering one day.

By the way, the yellow civil defense boxes with the integral handle and meter (as opposed to the similar unit with a separate metal probe on a curly cord) are useless. They are insensitive enough that they tell you that you have already had a fatal dose.
 
Over here in Scotland, there has been at least a couple of real scary occurances, The first one to spring to mind was in the late 1960 period, when a firm who manufactured instrumentation equipment with luminous dials closed down, Then began a horror story, from the little snippets i have heard, this particular works was buldozed, and all the debris put in a deep landfill, The site where the factory was situated, was dug down & at least two feet of whinstone was compacted in place,
I do not know if it is true but according to a rumour, the site is still monitored 50 years later
I wonder should this be true what was the fate of the workforce?

The second situation which is still ongoing, was an ex Naval aircraft servicing depot 1939-45 war establishment was closed in the late 1940/s, & the aircraft & spare stuff was trashed, Old instrument dials cockpit display stuff etc, taken down to the sea, & dumped slightly out in the bay, Now in these more enlightened days they have found the beach is full of hot spots,of radiation,in this particular bay Now it is cordoned off & a massive clean up looks to be underway

Sometimes i wonder if Homer Simpson is alive &well with his bright green radioactive billet!
 
Bigger scrap yards can detect a luminous dial in a trailer load of scrap that you've been driving down the road with for years and you haven't mutated yet before it crosses their scales. This is a lot ado about nothing. Claims of a minute radioactive source ( smoke alarm) contaminating a water aquifer are grossly exaggerated and last but not least, the longer it is radioactive, the less the emissions. Neutron conversion from alpha emitters rarely even interact with tissue since they have no electric charge like beta emissions. If it has a radioactive marker on it, leave it alone and tell the authorities about it. I haven't read anything in this post that tells me anyone here knows anything about fissionable materials.
 
Do a google for "Auburn Steel Company radioactive contamination". As I recall, they received a cesium source in its steel ball container in the scrap and melted it down. Lots of contaminated products, a contaminated melt shop, a contaminated dust collection plant, and some very worried employees. I think this incident was the cause for the present detectors at every scrap yard and steel mill. The craneman remembered moving a steel ball he thought was merely a wrecking ball. It was suspected an unknown pipeline company had an Xray machine that used the cesium source. It was suspected this company was financially failing and instead of disposing of the cesium in the proper manner, which was quite expensive, it secured the cesium in its steel ball container and sold it for scrap. The NRC had no idea where it might have come from. An Auburn employee who was given the task of checking on old stock piled civil defense materials found several radiation detectors showing significant indications when he turned them on in an area that should not have had any significant radioactivity. As far as I know they never found where the cesium origionally came from. I wonder if they check incoming chinese steel products for radiation? jrh
 
A problem for scrap yards and oild pipeyards is radioactive material refered to as NORM. Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) is found in some oilfield pipe. As a well is produced, sulfates of Barium and other natural substances from underground come up with the oils and can "plate" out on the walls of the pipe. When pipe from an old well is pulled from the well and sent to a pipeyard or scrap yard it needs to be checked with radiation detectors - hence why yards now have detectors at the gate.

Side note. The oilfield source talked about in the OP produced Neutrons. these are not detected with a regular geiger counter. Those are good for beta and gamma radiation. Special detectors are needed to detect alpha, x-rays, and neutron radiation. So don't think by waving a geiger counter (or scintillation detector either) around and it comes up clear that all is OK. FYI. (I was a health physics technician at a Cyclotron for a while in a previous life. my job was finding and decontaminating stuff)

So - How's that for making everyone paranoid.:thinking:

Jack
 
Years ago when I worked as tool maker, I took a job working for a guy who bought almost nothing new. All of his equipment was bought at bankruptcy auctions. For one of my first projects, I had to build a small assembly press. I explained that to get started, I would need something to use as a base: a sheet of plywood would have been fine. He walked me into a large room lined on three walls, from floor to ceiling, with shelves full of really old jigs and small presses and tooling, etc: lots of rust and dust. He pointed to one and said take the base off that. I disassembled it for what looked like a 3/4' thick aluminum plate.

Once I had the base plate separated from the other parts and felt its weight, I instantly knew that it wasn't aluminum. It was way-too light. I called the boss over and showed it to him. He argued that it was aluminum. I sliced a thin sliver off it at the band saw, held it in pliers and put into a torch flame. It burned so bright that we couldn't look at it, proving that the plate was in-fact solid magnesium, which could be quite hazardous to machine without proper fire suppressing chemicals on hand. A build-up of magnesium chips is very flammable. Sparks will fly off cutters and blades if you cut it dry; igniting the chips. Water actually feeds the fire, making it burn even hotter.

Natually, I didn't stay in that dump very long. It is true, you really need to know what you're buying. Do be careful!

Rog
 
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