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On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are people who hunt down non-radioactive steel. Apparently the background radiation of the air increased after 1940s
by uyt 5y ago
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are people who hunt down non-radioactive steel.
Apparently the background radiation of the air increased after 1940s but there are equipment (like geiger counters) which need extremely low radiation for optimal sensitivity. The main source of these low background steel are currently from scavenging sunken naval ships!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
- robocat 5y agoAn article about virgin lead - low background lead for science equipment: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/search-dark-matter-depends-ancient-shipwrecks/600718/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/search-d... I first heard about it when I was working on gamma ray spectrometer software for detecting background radiation in environmental samples. The spectrometer needs lead shielding that ideally taints the sampling as little as possible.