Radioactive materials surface in Tennessee scrap yards

When a metal recycler north of Memphis, Tenn., inadvertently mixed radioactive material into a new batch of metal in 1997, employees at the facility didn't know about it for three days, state documents show.
Contained in a piece of metal scrap, the radioactive isotope Americium-241 slipped into White Salvage's scrap-metal supply at its Ripley, Tenn., plant, blending into a new batch of aluminum. The contamination was not discovered until a shipment of the newly made material reached Memphis metal broker Southern Tin three days later.
The radioactive material was caught before it could be used to manufacture products. Even so, the contamination spread to White Salvage's kiln, slag, soil and aluminum ingots, according to Tennessee state reports.
Two employees received extensive medical tests, and no short-term or direct health problems were found, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation spokeswoman Tisha Calabrese-Benton said.
In this case, and others in Tennessee and across the nation, radioactive metals have found their way into scrap yards, trash dumps, recycling facilities and even manufactured goods, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports analyzed by Scripps Howard News Service.
The cases are compiled in the national Nuclear Material Events Database, a little-known library of 18,740 radioactive-material incidents nationwide, the vast majority since 1990.
A total of 880 Tennessee cases are identified in the database, but experts do not consider that number -- or the national total -- comprehensive because there is no state or federal requirement for reporting such incidents. The only mandatory rule is that the U.S. Department of Transportation must be notified about the knowing transport of radioactive material.
The contaminated material that surfaced in Tennessee and elsewhere comes from factory measuring sensors, specialized medical equipment, industrial smoke detectors and lighted exit signs, which all use small amounts of radioactive isotopes in their operation.
These tools and devices can be left behind when a factory closes or are simply discarded as scrap. This castoff radioactive material then can find its way into the recycling stream, where it can be blended with other scrap, creating recycled metal that poses potential health and environmental hazards.
With Oak Ridge National Laboratory outside Knoxville and a cottage industry of companies processing radioactive materials around the state, Tennessee is well versed with the problem of contaminated metals.
To prevent radioactive materials from getting into consumer products, state officials have been working with the scrap industry for decades, according to Calabrese-Benton.
But the oversight is not foolproof.
Aside from the White Salvage incident, two other Tennessee metal recyclers have melted radioactive metal, according to research compiled by James Yusko, a national expert on radioactive waste who works for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and has compiled an unofficial list of such incidents around the nation and the world.
In one case, Alcan Recycling of Shelbyville, Tenn., inadvertently melted material containing the isotope Thorium, which can be used as nuclear-reactor fuel, into a batch of aluminum in 1991, according to Yusko's barebones report. Two years later, a Knoxville metal-recycling facility now operating under the name Gerdau Ameristeel unintentionally melted a Cesium-137 source, costing the company $14.1 million to clean up the contamination, according to Yusko's records.
"Recyclers are the victims," Yusko said. "They're being affected because basically licensees and regulators have not done a good enough job at ensuring control over their radiation sources."
In the White Salvage incident, Tennessee officials could not identify the source of the Americium-241 because the material in which it was contained was fully melted.
However, the isotope that contaminated the facility is common in smoke detectors.
In another case, a La-Z-Boy chair factory in Dayton, Tenn., received radioactive metal brackets produced in Indiana in 1998, according to Indiana state documents. The Cobalt-60-laced brackets -- which were part of the chairs' spring assemblies -- were sent to La-Z-Boy factories in three other states, as well.
The La-Z-Boy company recalled the 1,000 tainted chairs before they had left warehouses for storerooms or homes, according to Rex Bowser, director of the Indoor Air and Radiological Health Emergency Response Program of the Indiana State Department of Health.
Sometimes, radioactive metal enters Tennessee from overseas. In 2001, ship builder Trinity Marine Products in Ashland City received more than 25,000 pounds of steel spiked with Cobalt-60 from Poland, according to NRC documents.
Trinity Marine was using 40-foot-long steel pieces to build two barges, and didn't discover that the metal was radioactive until it sent some scrap to another Gerdau Ameristeel metal-recycling facility, in Jackson, Tenn., which had radiation detectors that caught the tainted metal.
State and federal investigators determined that the tainted Polish steel entered the United States through the Port of New Orleans. Salzgitter International, the company that imported the steel from Poland, coordinated the recall of the contaminated steel, which was shipped to a Morgan City, La., company, Environmental Services, to be prepared for disposal.
In at least one case, a Memphis company was accused of sending radioactive material to another country. In September 2004, radioactive-disposal company Duratek, Inc., shipped three boxes of power-plant equipment contaminated with mixed fission material to a power station near Veracruz, Mexico, according to an October 2004 NRC report.
Mexican authorities complained that the Memphis company had sent unacceptably radioactive material, but the tainted equipment was within allowable U.S. standards, according to the NRC report.
Duratek did not respond to calls for comment.
To protect against these types of contamination incidents, many Tennessee steel mills have voluntarily installed radiation monitors, Tennessee environment department spokeswoman Calabrese-Benton said. She said mills contact her department if a radiation alarm goes off.
In the past, Tennessee officials randomly checked scrap yards. They gradually wound down that effort in the last five years, as more facilities installed detectors, she said.
When radioactive material is located, federal transport documents must be completed to return the hot metal to its owner, Calabrese-Benton said. If the load of metal is from outside Tennessee, officials in that state are notified.
E-mail Isaac Wolf at wolfi(at)shns.com.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
Recycled Radiation