Cesium in Scrap Metal Sets off Alarms in Chicago, Shipment Returned to West Virginia

On August 22, Steel of West Virginia, Inc., located in Huntington, notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that seven days earlier the facility had “potentially melted a cesium-137 source during their melting process before shipping scrap metal to another facility in Chicago,” according to an NRC event notification of August 29. The state of West Virginia detected radiation levels of Cs-137 in the atmosphere of the facility’s bag house. The state of Illinois also alerted the NRC, as the radioactive dust on the shipment from the steel mill set off an alarm when it arrived in Chicago. The NRC reported that it did not know where the cesium came from. Despite the highly toxic dust on the shipment, plans are to return the material to West Virginia, traveling nearly 450 miles on public roads. — Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Event No. 57283, Aug. 29, 2024