Pre-Atomic Steel

[@steveanderson9290]

I retired from Argonne National Laboratory. Many of the shielding features (Doors, walkway labyrinths, etc.) were constructed from WWI battleship armor plating, and I'm not talking about nice refabricated steel panels, but the actual chunks of battleships with the Oxy-Acetylene cut marks still evident. As you stated, after the accelerator is shut down, the mechanical spaces (for instance) would need to be surveyed for any radiation pickup, and you just couldn't detect a small amount of radiation (that wasn't supposed to be there) if your background wasn't zero to begin with. When I would walk in to the accelerator tunnel I could never resist placing my hand on that insanely thick and heavy steel plate wondering where it had been and gone through.

[@turkeyboyjh1]

I lived right around there in Orland park

[@misccomments9752]

My uncle Robert McGowan was a metallurgist at Agonne National Lab also, and by the way, in Armand Hammer's book "Hammer", he relates that at Scapa Flow, where he had the Piper Alpha platform built, there were some labor vs management problems, and subsequently the big Piper Alpha disaster.

[@fordprefect80]

Pre-atomic steel, what an interesting topic. I certainly learnt something today. Thanks.

[@billykershaw2781]

Bessemer Convertor, Spennymoor, County Durham, England....we were at the cutting edge way back in the day...many thanks from the North East.

[@darthdad160]

Nicely done. Can't wait to have the Kidd back home.

[@Mr.SharkTooth-zc8rm]

70 year old man checking in. My only connection is that my dad served on the USS Sailfish in WW2, Pacific Theater. Outside of that, I had NO/NONE idea about these particulars involving steel making... WOW!

[@SueKilmister]

Great explanation. Very interesting.

[@RPaton]

Another explanation could be that the refractory lining of blast furnaces has "Small radioactive sealed sources are inserted into the refractory bricks, at different sections of the blast furnace " The use of radioactive isotopes as tracers provides a means of measuring the refractory wear rate in a converter or blast furnace.

[@Harley-D-Mcdonald]

Great video. I've told people this for years and it's not uncommon for them not to believe me for whatever reason.

[@pops336C]

Fascinating. Never thought about it before. Thank you

[@philsteele7151]

Scapa Flow was initially salvaged for commercial reasons, just scrap or reuse for the early ships, the later and harder to salvage ships are used for pre atomic steel.

[@Gronk79]

Spot on video! I always think of the USS Houston when I hear of salvaging pre-atomic steel.

[@HM2SGT]

3:42 *GRAVE ROBBING!* I first heard about it reading an article in the Guardian newspaper in 2017. _(The world's biggest grave robbery: Asia’s disappearing WWII shipwrecks. Exclusive: the unmarked graves of thousands of sailors are threatened by illegal metal salvagers)_ A 2023 follow up from the daily mail indicates the ships are still being plundered by the grave robbers. _('Grave robber' Chinese salvage ship is caught looting British WW2 battleship burial sites for steel: Fury as two vessels sunk by Japan, losing 840 lives, are ripped up near Malaysia in 'loathsome' act)_

[@ankles632]

The same thing has happened to USS Houston and HMAS Perth, both sunk at the battle of Sunda Straight in March 1941. About 50% of Houston and 75% of Perth has been removed.

[@Phoenix-bq7lw]

Grave robbing? Who are you call grave robbers? Europeans have been grave robbing Chinese Ming Dynasty wrecks to loot the valuable cargo since forever! What do you call them? Treasure hunters. And you call us grave robbers. How does that make sense? Unlike those grave robbers/treasure hunters, we do not loot the wreck! We clear our waterways to make it safe for navigation! How much is the value of this, pre-atomic steel? Not enough to cover the costs of operations! And we buried any human remains we found with dignity according to our custom in proper local cemeteries! What more could you want? How do those treasure hunters treat the human remains in those Chinese ships they loot? Do they even perform burial ceremony? Not even close!

[@markgallagher5908]

@@Phoenix-bq7lw I found a grave robber. Congratulations the CCP will give you a bowl of contaminated rice.

[@matrinezkevin11492]

​@Phoenix-bq7lw you need someone to claim the grave. You Chinese aren't claiming them and most of you don't even know about some hundreds of years old shipwreck that you never logged nor cared to log. Whereas these shipwrecks are claimed by countries that still exist and still have records of the sinkings/scuttlings and sailors that died on those ships. You cant even claim those ancient Chinese relics since your very own CCP has done its damned best to eliminate any connection to the history of pre-communist China. Hop of your soapbox. If you wanna complain about your history being desecrated, jump down the throat of your tyrannical history revisionist government first if you have the stones to do it (you dont).

[@ligmasack9038]

@@Phoenix-bq7lw Bullshit, you loot the Graves of Sailors for YOUR OWN GAIN. There is nothing Noble or Legitimate about what you and Yours are doing. I hope you get taken to Davey Jones' along with your "People".

[@mikehenthorn1778]

Great video, I bet it's a lot easier to find a dry dock for the kid that is for the New Jersey

[@thewatcher5271]

That Was Interesting. I Guess There Were Side Effects In Other Things But You Wouldn't Normally Think Of Steel Being Affected. Thank You. (Like #546 - Comment #43)

[@Todd-p4t]

Very interesting and despicable of what people forget. Thanks

[@Phoenix-bq7lw]

Despicable? If even you forget, then it is garbage. If it is precious to you then you take care of it. There are still plenty of the remaining. You are welcome to take care of it. Save us the clean up cost.

[@vf12497439]

As a truck driver i became aware of this as i delivered steel to different places they would check my loads with a geiger counter. Not to be rejected but graded as to what steel would be used for what purposes. Low background steel is VALUABLE.

[@PresidentCamacho24]

I had no idea there was such a thing as pre-atomic steel and that it had an effect on instruments.

[@misccomments9752]

My uncle Robert McGowan was a metallurgist at Agonne National Lab also, and by the way, in Armand Hammer's book "Hammer", he relates that at Scapa Flow, where he had the Piper Alpha platform built, there were some labor vs management problems, and subsequently the big Piper Alpha disaster.

[@willharmatuk4723]

Wow. Good video, but I have to add USS Kidd to my bucket list.

[@kplante7881]

So interesting…. Thanks for sharing!

[@timwoodruff7984]

Very interesting. To think that steel made in the atomic age would bear the imprint of nuclear bombs -- well, that's a mind blower. Great presentation! Thanks for sharing.

[@jeffreyfales7343]

Everything has atomic stuff in it after 1945.. even you. And me.

[@ronjones1077]

I am very happy that we have dedicated people who want to preserve our war time history and the memories of those who lost their lives so that we could live. It would be nice to also preserve a ship that was built for peace and for our nations pride. The SS United States is that ship. Tax payers built all of the ships of war, and we also built the SSUnited States with tax dollars. We cherish the Queen Mary even though she is from Britain.

[@HM2SGT]

Sounds like asteroid mining and smelting would be the best solution. In the meantime, reclaiming steel from pre-atomic buildings sounds like it must be a thing.

[@jeffreysmith4304]

Very Informative Thanx

[@arnenelson4495]

There are pre Hiroshima steel parts of German WW1 battleships on the moon used in sensitive measuring equipment. Crazy, huh?

[@alanstarkie2001]

Wow, wasn't aware that this was a thing!

[@stuckp1stuckp122]

It would help to clarify the difference of types of radiation: high energy light in the form of gamma rays, doesn’t affect materials. The other source of radiation are radio isotopes, unstable matter, generated by nuclear explosions and float in the atmosphere. Thus those elements can be embedded in steel.

[@gottfriedheumesser1994]

This guy hardly knows what he is speaking about.

[@1936Studebaker]

HMAS Perth has also been attacked by Indonesian scrap merchants.

[@Phoenix-bq7lw]

It has been cleared by Indonesian maritime authority! Get your fact right! It is foreign ship that does not pay levy anyway. Next time do not sink your ships in busy waterway. It caused problems for the people who live here. Do you not dispose car wrecks in the busy highway?

[@N0B0DY_SP3C14L]

"Irradiate" is the correct term. "Irradiated _(steel, atmosphere, etc.)_". "Radiate" is to send out. "Irradiate" is to contaminate other items, usually with gamma rays. Hope this helps.

[@ATruckCampbell]

So any of my 1944 and earlier collectors stuff is pre -atomic? Cool.

[@v1-vr-rotatev2-vy_vx31]

Informative thank you for the lesson

[@daviecrocket9160]

Wow never heard of this

[@ericsmith6692]

Wow I did not know that, thanks for the education 😁

[@RobertCraft-re5sf]

And the low-backround steel is pretty much a limited resource. Steel is so often recycled that it all just gets mixed together. There was also a radiation incident in Mexico where a highly radioactive source was melted INTO a large batch of rebar made from scrap steel.. They only found the truck because it set off a radiation detector. No one even knows where the other trucks of radioactive rebar went.

[@markward6076]

Amazing.

[@timrockman7]

Billions of people and animals have been filtering the radioactive particles out of the air also.

[@moralreality7328]

Couldn't the instruments be calibrated rather than a true "zero"

[@wmffmw]

Yes

[@ashardalondragnipurake]

why not just include the irradiation of the steel into the baseline even pre nukes there is still background radiation from space coming in measure after you make and adjust the measurements

[@skunkjobb]

6:20 I doubt that the use of pure oxygen helps. It's normally extracted from air so I guess you get some contaminants even with the oxygen. An alternative could be to make the oxygen from water but I don't think that is practiced in steel making since it requires a lot more energy.

[@markchapman2585]

Great video

[@bruceb4349]

Good explanation, Thank You. Did anyone find out who took those 3 ships? Were those people reprimanded ? And, Any idea of where all of that radiation in the atmosphere went to ? Did we all breath it in and absorb it into our bodies ? Did it all fall out of the air and become the dust at our feet, to be kicked up with the wind, or as we walk ? Has it all been thrust out of our atmosphere with every starlink rocket launch ? Does anyone know ?

[@HM2SGT]

Businesses in the eastern Pacific rim from countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and China. There is a certain practicality and pragmatism to it, but to me it smacks of disrespect and grave robbing. I first heard about it reading an article in the Guardian newspaper in 2017. _(The world's biggest grave robbery: Asia’s disappearing WWII shipwrecks. Exclusive: the unmarked graves of thousands of sailors are threatened by illegal metal salvagers)_ A 2023 follow up from the daily mail indicates the ships are still being plundered by the grave robbers. _('Grave robber' Chinese salvage ship is caught looting British WW2 battleship burial sites for steel: Fury as two vessels sunk by Japan, losing 840 lives, are ripped up near Malaysia in 'loathsome' act)_

[@rockets4kids]

The air that goes into the blast furnace to contaminate the steel is the same air you breathe.

[@redtobertshateshandles]

Google atomic testing. It's everywhere. " reprimanded ", I don't think that they g.a.c.

[@Thom4ES]

7 /10s of earth's surface is salt water...3/10s is on average on land..deserts glaciers rivers an citys ,forests an farms , equally- nuke stuff is heavy - it falls down ,bounces little and sits - worms Nd roots take it in , it breaks down on its own energy - see half lifes..note half life only affects the volume of the poisonous part s of uranium/ plutonium.the dust goes everywhere - our body's pee it out , little bits are exceptionally tolerable- up to a point : it gets tied up in trees an people and Tigers and moths , and gets recycled as it gets weaker- avoid atomic s...but don't live in fear...we can measure things extremely accurately- but we only kinda know what it means. Hope this finds you well....c yA

[@DB.scale.models]

You just answer a question I read on many ww1 ships from Germany, stated was used for medical instruments. Never fully knowing why, tell today😊

[@oldcarnocar]

Pre War steel

[@hkr321hkr]

They need the steel to make sensors...

[@skyedog24]

Thank you so much if I learned one thing a day I learned this today thank you again 🇺🇲🙏

[@markschlehr6911]

Carbon is not a metal but you spoke of alloying metals like it was. Alloys can include non metal elements as well. But I didn't watch the whole video to see if you clarified that.

[@carstenschroder7054]

🙈 what is the reason for this (well made) video? 🤷 If you want non-radiated steel - get some new stuff.🧐 Or am i missing something here?😌

[@usskidd661]

@carstenschroder7054 : It WAS a thing because while radiation levels were up in the atmosphere, the air taken in during the steel-making process caused the steel to be slightly irradiated. Now that levels are more back to normal and steel-making processes have changed, it's not as big as deal.

[@andypanda4756]

Battlefield steel with countless US D.U. rounds in it (Depleted Uranium bullets) is carted away by locals in the Middle East who melt it down for cookware like pots and spoons. Some of this radioactive steel can be made into products that are sold back to the U.S.A..

[@skunkjobb]

DU has very low radioactivity. It's further pyrophoric so I guess it would ignite if molten together with steel.

[@andypanda4756]

@skunkjobb DU rounds have been linked to cancer in American soldiers. The "low" radiation is enough to hurt our own soldiers. Guess it doesn't take much.

[@lukasfischer2567]

sreel is not a process which combines iron and carbon, it is quite thr opposite, by producing steel, you remove ever more carbon from the iron ore by burning it, where the need for air/oxygen comes from...

[@RickMason-yj7pv]

Iron is an ELEMENT. Carbon is an ELEMENT. Steel is a MIXTURE of IRON and CARBON. Grade 10 science.

[@lukasfischer2567]

@RickMason-yj7pv they said: to make steel you combine iron and carbon which is just not true. the coal you burn with the iron and air is just there to get a lot of needed heat into the process, in which you remove carbon from the iron ore(in there is plenty of it), because it weekens the product imense, and below a certaim percentage of carbon it qualifies as steel. simplified you can say, the less carbon you got in the end the more strength the produced steel has. at best you remove all of it and get a corbonfreesteel, but for economic reasons you are often just fine with a certain low percentage of it, where you dont need the highest quality. so no, its not a process wich combines iron and carbon rather quite the opposite, a process which removes carbon from iron under extremly high temperatur and in an oxygen rich enviroment.

[@fresatx]

My doood.. If you gonna have big wad of Red Man in your cheek.. At least go hard and don't edit out you grabbing your spitter.

[@usskidd661]

@fresatx : 😄😆😂🤣 Dippin's bad, mmmmkay?

[@Chez8922-kf6cy]

Is that why his face was crooked. I honestly thought he had a disability. I missed the spit part.

[@usskidd661]

@@Chez8922-kf6cy: It was a joke, my dude. South Park reference. 😄😆😂🤣

[@captaintoyota3171]

Yup thats why battleship steel ww2 and earlier is SUPER valuable 4 labs etc. Same with lead

[@Baddy187]

As a Dutch person, it hurts to know these ships are salvaged by Indonesians and Chinese. It costs nothing to ignore the ships 😢

[@AdamPNelson]

My Grandfather was at bikini and watched the first bomb go off. He said his binoculars went white and he could not figure out why until he realized he was staring at a wall of water that took up his whole field of view. Every time he would look at my daughters dual pigtails sprouting up from her head she said it reminding him of the bomb f:)

[@scottm5425]

Keep away from my old car nasty salvagers!

[@usskidd661]

@@scottm5425: 😄😆😂🤣

[@holyearth]

We’re breathing that air…….

[@jimfarmer7811]

I think a lot of commenters didn't bother to watch the video or they would know that atomic bomb test radiation has basically decayed to zero. The idea that pre-atomic steal is worth any more than scrap is ridiculous. Where I live there are numerous girder bridges built in the 20s and 30s that have been abandoned in place because they aren't cost effective to sell for scrap.

[@WALTERBROADDUS]

Not ridiculous. Your bridges are exposed to the atmosphere.

[@jimfarmer7811]

@WALTERBROADDUS Please goggle it. If the neutron Flux was high enough to be detected in a steel bridge after 60 years we wouldn't be having this discussion because the world would have been sterilized 60 years ago.

[@will7its]

@@WALTERBROADDUS And yours aren't???

[@WALTERBROADDUS]

@@will7its Of course they are. Anything built since 1945 is exposed to the atmosphere.

[@will7its]

@@WALTERBROADDUS So before 1945 there was no atmosphere??? Your not making sense....

[@brianpencall4882]

You didn't mention that the production of steel requires a tremendous amount of air, which then causes the elevated radiation levels.

[@usskidd661]

@@brianpencall4882: Actually, he did mention the air. 🙂

[@brianpencall4882]

​@@usskidd661 Yes he did mention air, what he did not mention is that production of steel requires enormous quantities of air. This is why a miniscule amount of radioactive material in the air becomes critical.

[@Rick8191-tv8pg]

If the Govs claims ownership of these still, then they need to pull them out of the water and put in a dry dock. Idk how they can claim ownership of something that they abandoned on the ocean floor , often in international waters nearly 100 years ago.. Like how Spain fights for ownership of treasure from 400 yr old shipwrecks off the coast of Columbia.

[@RobertPace-qz3bt]

I don’t blame these countries for mining a resource in their waters. I do believe they should treat the remains of the combatants with dignity and offer to repatriate them to their respective countries.

[@ironwolf6849]

Yeah I say if you are found to be robbing these ships then not only should the country who did it or who was apart of it pay a fine of a million dollars per kg of stolen steel plus 100 million for each disturbed body. Plus all the boats that was apart of the scrapping should be sent to be scrapped.

[@Kolan_Koala]

Bikini tests were atmospheric

[@A3Kr0n]

Thank God irradiated air is harmless to humans.

[@KC-nd7nt]

Word ?

[@anthonyiocca5683]

Little known concern about atomic effects that we have only one safeguard for, Prayer.🙏

[@Gregknows-uj8gg]

Oh! Get over it! The machines just need too be redesigned too read the starting background radiation as zero.

[@usskidd661]

@@Gregknows-uj8gg: You realize we're just giving the history / meaning of "pre-atomic steel," right? We're not advocating anything.

[@Gregknows-uj8gg]

@usskidd661 yes I realize that. I am sorry if my comment seemed inappropriate. I just think that it is actually a no-brainer too re calibrate or redesign.

[@usskidd661]

@Gregknows-uj8gg : Not inappropriate, no. Just checking. Some folks took this video as "bad science" on our part, but we were just recounting the basic history to explain what, when, and why. 🙂

[@ZIGZAGBureauofInvestigation]

☢

[@olivere5497]

i dunno bruh im dubious

[@Phoenix-bq7lw]

It is very arrogant for you people to call us thief for clearing the garbage you left behind. We have no knowledge nor we care about this, pre-atomic steel. We have no obligation to maintain these, war graves. What do you do with those warship wrecks obstructing Mediterranean shipping lane? Would you not remove them? We did not remove it before because our shipping lanes were not as busy as today. But now it costs us a fortune to go around the area. Anyway, we do as we see fit in our own country, our own sovereignty.

[@polskastrong8558]

You sound brown. SAD!

[@horatiohuffnagel7978]

If atmospheric detonations can affect steel i wonder what its been doing to us. No wonder everyone has cancer these days.

[@skunkjobb]

There has been no such tests since 1979 so cancer cases of today has nothing to do with nuclear testing. (And with nothing, I include if there could be 0,000001 % of the total incidence or something like that.)

[@gottfriedheumesser1994]

Your video does not have a quantitative background. What causes the radioactivity in the steel, how much is it, and where does it hurt? To call the 'pre-atomic steel' is also very unscientific. It seems to be steel that does not consist of atoms. So that's a lot of blah blah to me. I know about the increase of 14C in the atmosphere caused by nuclear bombs, which allows for very exact dating of organic material after WW2, as Walter Kucera et alii described. There you get exact quantitative data in contrast to what you are saying. I doubt that you have any scientific background.

[@jayh1734]

I think he was talking about ships, not science. This looks like another one of those examples of doers vs talkers to me. All too common now.

[@gottfriedheumesser1994]

@@jayh1734 One can talk all day but he does not need YT for that.

[@Phoenix-bq7lw]

If you do not want someone to touch your, war grave, then take it home. Do you even pay Indonesia to maintain and designate those wrecks as wargrave? They were sunk in the war that did not concern us anyway. Those wrecks are only navigation hazards to us and need to be cleared. There were shipwrecks from Ming Dynasty China that the people did not touch out of respect that were desecrated by European treasure hunters who coveted the load inside. So what made them different to some sunken foreign warships that are hazards to local navigation? You want to designated some as preserved war grave? Fine. Arrange it with our government. You want to keep all? You've got to be kidding! Our country is not your cemetery! You do not traverse these water everyday like we do.

[@Justin-rq6kf]

You sound like you're greedy and have few morales.

[@kellymcclendon6601]

Baloney. Just use Dawn to wash the steel.

[@usskidd661]

@@kellymcclendon6601: 😄😆😂🤣

[@neilgriffiths6427]

Horsesh*t.

[@duotronic6451]

Sounds like BS to me. Fallout fell out of the atmosphere long ago.

[@rockets4kids]

If you test steel made today you'll find it is still radioactive. This is why pre-atomic steel is so valuable, and why people go to the effort of underwater salvage.

[@sandasturner9529]

Now it's in the ground.

[@silverdrillpickle7596]

Duotronic Absolutely correct

[@redtobertshateshandles]

Onto dust which blows around. Ever heard of a " dust storm ??"

[@rogerlevasseur397]

Don't forget more recent events such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. Then there's nuclear power plants that release small amounts of radioactive gases annually. As for the fallout from atmospheric testing from 1945 to the early 1960s, there's been an increase in C-14 in the air - that's now part of the carbon cycle. As for the fallout itself, made up of fission products that just doesn't vanish when it falls out. no. on land it's into the soil. it gets disturbed - plant growth takes some of it in, farming, or drought induced dust storms. What of trees that have taken in radioactive stuff and the tree is later burned - it's back into the air again. There are maps that show ground radioactivity across the western US from the bomb tests conducted in Nevada decades ago. It's found in lake sediments, too.

[@MeaHeaR]

he was hard to be understanding voicê

[@notlisted-cl5ls]

meh. its all theoretical postulate that really doesnt matter today.

[@VoorTrekker88]

Did the Vela Incident (joint South African/Israel secret atomic bomb test) in 1979 or the Indian atomic bomb tests from the 1970s-1990s have any significant effect on atmospheric radiation levels?

[@skunkjobb]

With a total of 528 atmospheric tests (or 529 if Vela really was such), one or two test plus or minus makes no difference. India has only conducted underground tests.