I saw a comment the other day that “steel forged before the nuclear age is very valuable.” and talked about the lengths they go to salvage old battleships etc. for steel made “before the Manhattan project.” What does this mean? How did nuclear testing permanently affect steel worldwide?

Question

I saw a comment the other day that “steel forged before the nuclear age is very valuable.” and talked about the lengths they go to salvage old battleships etc. for steel made “before the Manhattan project.” What does this mean? How did nuclear testing permanently affect steel worldwide?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

Lots of good answers here, and I’ll add one point: natural iron ore in the ground isn’t contaminated with radiation; this happens *in the refining process*, which involves exposure to *contaminated air* at high temperatures.

In principle, we *could* make low-background steel from freshly-mined ore, but it would be expensive — and it’s a lot cheaper to just salvage pre-WW2 shipwrecks, because we have a *lot* of those. At the end of WW1 the German fleet surrendered to the Allies and was interned at Scapa Flow in Scotland, and their admiral pulled a fast one by scuttling the ships one night to keep them out of the Royal Navy. They are there to this day, gradually being stripped of steel parts.