https://www.good.is/articles/the-search-for-low-background-steel
The Worldwide Scavenger Hunt For Vintage, Low-Radiation Metals
The quest for precious metals has led scavengers to rip up old railways, raid sunken battleships, and disturb centuries-old artworks in the name of science.
Jed Oelbaum
05.10.18
While most people wouldn’t be too excited about anything that came out of a sewer, Phillip Barbeau, a professor of physics at Duke University, tells me enthusiastically about 3 tons of lead that was recently pulled from Boston’s waste system. The metal, once used to seal pipes, is one of his more promising potential sources of “low-background” lead for his experiments. It’s now sitting at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb.
Low-background metals — most famously steel and lead — are valuable because they carry particularly low levels of radiation compared with most conventional materials. Used as shielding in advanced particle physics projects and for medical science devices like X-ray chambers, these metals won’t interfere with specialized, highly radiation-sensitive environments and tools.
The quest for these metals has led researchers, governments, and corporations to rip up old railways, raid sunken battleships, and disturb centuries-old artworks in the name of science.
Barbeau’s low-background steel supply, for example, is surplus World War II armor-ship plating that came from the Norfolk Navy Shipyard and was donated to Duke many years ago. His top source for low-background lead is a University of Chicago stockpile sourced from a 300-year-old sunken British ship. The lead, he says, “showed up with barnacles still on it.”
While some low-background materials can be freshly produced (like copper), the easiest route to most of these substances is a kind of scavenger hunt for metal manufactured before humans first split the atom.
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