if every bit of steel produced since 1945 contains radioactive isotopes, is that eventually going to bite us in the ass? Are there long term consequences of not being able to use modern steel for certain products?
In: Technology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
It’s going to matter a bit more when we run out of steel from old sunken ships from before the Trinity test (July 16, 1945).
The radiation is coming from two possible sources; the atmosphere (since they’re using oxygen pulled from the air in steel production), and in recycling metal (where there’s a chance they’ll end up with trace amounts of cobalt-60 and other impure metals).
That page points out some examples of machinery we use low background steel in, which really aren’t that many. Still like you say, we’re running out of it (slowly). The shining ray of hope is that the amount of background radiation has gone down (a lot) since the ban on nuclear weapon testing went into effect.
That doesn’t mean it won’t have some radiation to it – that wiki page points out that 0.11 mSv/yr *was the record high* for background radiation; and that now-a-days, it’s 0.005 mSv/yr above natural levels. That is for the *world* background radiation, not necessarily the *steel* radiation.
Regardless, we won’t have truly 100% radiation free anything for a very, very long time. And when it comes down to it, and we’ve used all the steel from those sunken ships, we’ll just have to retrain people on how to properly use those instruments, tools, and machines, to tell false positives apart from actual readings – or similarly adjust how we analyze readings from those instruments to account for radiation coming from the steel.
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