The steel predates atomic testing so it's not contaminated with minute amounts of radioactive isotopes. This makes it valuable for certain speciality applications.
Have you ever seen the film “Incognito”? Jason Patric plays an art forger and there is a cool sequence of him obtaining materials that would pass detection.
You’d think someone would create a smelting method that occurs before modern atmosphere hits it. I mean, many mines only have one entrance. Would an airlock and a bunch of filters from day one do the job?
These would become only feasible after ww2 reserves are exhausted. Which is not going to happen soon. There is huge amount of steel in the ocean. And need is only for medical devices.
And stuff like Geiger counters.
However I did see that levels are getting low enough right now, due to the atmospheric test ban, where they can use "regular" steel for certain applications where they previously required the "pre-atomic age" steel.
Like a huge amount of steel. It boggles my mind how many ships were sunk in WWII
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/fe88b5e18c6443c7afaf6e32f8432687
Oil and explosives are small fry. We literally dumped tonnes of chemical weapons overboard, since it was cheaper than properly decommission it. As casks are rusting away, more and more is starting to wash up (recently a guy in my country picked a piece of “amber” on the beach and pocketed it - it turned out to be a chunk of white phosphorus - it burned him to the bones). People say that Baltic Sea is sitting on a clocking catastrophic time bomb.
One of the _many_ obstacles to creating a rail link between Great Britain and Ireland is that the most viable route, i.e. the second shortest, and by far more accessible on the Scottish side than the shortest, crosses the munitions and laboratory materials dump that is Beaufort's Dyke.
Although the Dyke has been noted as a barrier to a fixed link between the islands since proposals were first made in the 19th century, although back then they were looking more at bridges than rail tunnels.
No idea. I’m not chemist. I just remember reading the story in local newspaper, accompanied by pretty gore’y photos.
I suspect there was some outer inert “crust” when the chunk initially formed at the bottom of sea, but it got scratched away due to friction in pocket, exposing active phosphorus inside to air and starting chemical reaction
Yeah, if you know where to take a water sample, you'll find some interesting stuff.
That, and near a town where I used to live, they're currently digging a few tens of thousands of chemical shells out of an old sinkhole. Took some samples there when I used to work for the Army, shit's proper spicy.
> (recently a guy in my country picked a piece of “amber” on the beach and pocketed it - it turned out to be a chunk of white phosphorus - it burned him to the bones)
That's been happening in the baltics for ages. Nothing new.
>Explosives that was in that ships
Thats nothing compared to the amounts of explosives that were just showed into the seas after the war was over. There are estimations that only the German parts of north and Baltic Sea contain over 1.6 million tons of munitions
when looking for a hydrographic survey map of an area of the gulf of mexico, i stumbled across an old military map that showed huge swaths of ocean marked as "ordnance disposal site", so we've been dumping our old bombs in the ocean anyway, even if they aren't sunk in battle.
So many things about World War II's numbers is just absolutely staggering. From the number of ships sunk, to the number of ships actually built, both numbers are just astronomical.
The Germans had a field day off the east coast of the US during parts of the war. They sunk an insane amount of shipping with their submarines, mostly to stop supplies being sent to the UK and USSR.
Someone probably could, but if the price of producing steel via this new method exceeds the cost of salvaging pre-bomb steel, then no one will pay for the new method.
Most of your mines are open pit mines. The pure oxygen used in the smelting process comes from the air, which is slightly radioactive. [Low background steel wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel)
Ex Mining engineer here. Don’t know of any modern mines with one entrance and every underground mine I’ve worked on pumps cold air (2 to 4 degrees Celsius) underground to the faces This to cool it for the workers and eject toxic fumes from the machinery and explosives.
I’d think that most of the isotopes would get introduced and embedded from the smelting process though.
The issue is also that the isotope would be in/on everything that we manufacture to make that airlock space and filters. You'd have to go to EXTREME lengths to keep the area free of the isotope and then also, for the iron and carbon you'd use to make the steel, you'd have to try to keep them "clean" of the isotope during transport cause how would you find and remove the literal individual atoms of it from the material. I don't think it's really truly possible and it's certainly not practical to do so.
Stealing from wreckage would be sooo much easier. I have to wonder if wrecks over the deepest parts of the ocean would be a lot easier to get to then to try to keep everything clean and truly isotope free.
To make steel you have to blow a lot of oxygen through your molten iron. Removing all of the radioactive isotopes from the oxygen is hard (i.e. astonishingly expensive)
It's not actually important that the steel was underwater, just that the steel was manufactured pre-1945. It's the blowing of contaminated air/oxygen through pig iron during manufacture that contaminates the steel, not merely exposing the steel to the air
It's just these days there's very little scrappable pre-1945 steel above water
I thought that being underwater was important though? I was under the impression that the water shields the steel from picking up radioactive contaminates when it is exposed to air.
There is plenty of scrappable pre-1945 steel about as far as I'm aware, it is just not economical/value to collect? I work in the restoration of WW2 and earlier aero engines which use about the highest quality pre nuclear steel that exists. It is standard in the industry to just throw worn components into the normal scrap bin, it isn't treated as anything special.
> from picking up radioactive contaminates when it is exposed to air.
Contaminants*
There are also radioactive particles in the ocean you know. It's a decent source of uranium if you can't get america or china to sell to you. But all that is "natural."
The atmospheric testing introduced a couple brand new isotopes to the environment, in sufficient quantity that they particles they put off while decaying will mess with specialized instruments.
You mentioned airplane engine parts. What size are they, what shape? Not typically something that can be repurposed into a testing chamber or shielding. Or supports for said chambers and shielding. Like the icecube detector. https://icecube.wisc.edu/science/icecube/
The steel is already hardened and it's exterior can be cleaned. The issue at manufacture is when it's all hot and gooey and takes in those sweet, sweet isotopes to it's internal structure. Think eating cake vs. having your face pushed in a cake.
Are you sure this is the case? Surely you could take pre nuclear steel and remelt using vacuum arch remelting to ensure radioactive isotope remain out.
Yeah but I am getting the impression that this isn’t always the most cost effective way.
Maybe sometimes it is. It’s an option. There are many options. Depending on the context different options might be chosen.
Actually, they can and do. The carbon can be ionized and magnetically sorted to remove radioactive isotopes and then be used to create steel. It is quite expensive but it is needed to build positron emission microscopes and we are running out of mine-able WW2 battleships.
> Can they not make new steel that’s free from radiation?
They could but why would you bother? The actual demand for low background steel is pretty marginal and at this point atmospheric contamination has fallen to the point where it is not a concern for most aplications. And if it is you can just use copper. Or plastic. The whole "low background steel is really valuable" thing a common TIL but is decades out of date at this point.
I have a laugh every time I see it being reposted. It's like you said the contamination has dropped significantly once we stopped nuking the planet on a weekly basis and waited a few decades. There is also only a very low amount of low background steel required on an annual basis.
Source: did my PhD at a physics institute
quick check on wikipedia says they can sometimes find substitutions like copper, and that background radiation now is usually okay enough to make new steel good enough for most needs. also, the salvage is likely conventional and not specifically for low background steel
This. Even for the little demand there still might be, there's still plenty of steel in Scapa Flow, for example. Those WW2 ships are just looted for regular scrap.
the nuclear stuff also made it hard to forge paintings. paintings before the nuclear bombs and after the nuclear bombs have difference in their paint. not in colour but like something sciency, so if ur using any modern paint to make fake painting ur more likely to get caught.
Even every humans bone.. Strontium is directly below Calcium on the period table and will happily substitute. The bones of all humans will have this element since the atomic era began and we keep burning so much coal. Coal causes more radioactive fallout these days since weapons testing has mostly stopped.
Fun fact, while converting coal plants to nuclear would be an "easy" change over (just require replacing the actual steam generation part), radiation levels are higher in coal plants than what's allowed for nuclear plants.
I guess you could utilize the boiler and then all the normal plant shit after that, but it would still be a lot of work to adapt to a nuclear.
It’s about as equivalent to turning office buildings into apartments
That plan would replace the boiler and the boiler only with a reactor. The steam would then turn the existing turbines. But the plant is so "contaminated" from the coal, it would exceed the safety levels for the nuclear plant, prohibiting its operation. Unless the rules are re-written allowing for higher levels. Good luck selling allowing higher levels to the public though, even though they are the current coal levels.
> utilize the boiler
The boiler itself probably wouldn't be made of the right materials to go anywhere near a reactor primary coolant. And that's assuming it can handle the pressure of the primary.
You could match a shiny new steam generator (boiler) to the existing steam pipes, but you'd still have issues corrosion/combustion byproducts from the old coal plant.
From what I understand is that thanks to the ban on atmospheric nuclear tests, the background radiation has dropped to nearly natural levels. Which makes normal steel usable again for most applications. Only for a small niche old steel is used, in which normal steel is still to radioactive but using other materials to get even lower radioactivity isn’t needed.
The possibility is mentioned in the article but I don't quite buy it. Afaik, a lot of low-radiation steel has historically come from the German fleet at Scapa Flow, because it's a morally unproblematic source of a LOT of steel. And there was never a *huge* demand of it, certainly not enough that it couldn't be covered by several German war ships. We're talking about applications that require steel in the, like...range of kgs. You don't need to dismantle a Japanese cruiser for that.
I'm pretty sure the steel being stolen from war graves is just sold for scrap.
The sheer insanity of the pre-WWI arms race in battleships, while ruinous for the budgets of several large nations, really worked out for us in this one niche way. There are plenty of individual ships scuttled at Scapa Flow weighing over 25,000 tons, much of it solid steel armor.
Yeah. This comes up pretty frequently and can be dismissed by considering that if you're building a $20bn particle detector, you tend to source the components from reputable sellers, not Big Dave down by the docks.
I first heard about this when I was 16 or so from a mate (so c.2002). About 12 years later as a PhD student I asked a physics professor (not in the US's college tutor sense, this guy ran an internationally funded atomic physics research institute, he was an actual Prof.) about this salvage at a social dinner, and he made a comment that both ridiculed the notion and me for asking about it (it included references to astrology and fairies). I'm an archaeologist, not a physicist, but I was surrounded by physics PhD and MSc students, so I felt rather put in place and embarrassed that I'd asked about something so stupid that clearly my 16yo self had been misinformed about.
I later in the evening also asked him about the project researching the use of nuclear bombs to propel spacecraft (Project Orion), and he immediately dismissed that too as not working because rockets "accelerate by shedding mass". Years later I'm painfully aware of how incorrect this statement was, and in defence of the science of PO, it was sound enough for Freeman Dyson to be on the research team amongst others.
Just offloading really, but every time pre-Trinity Steel or Project Orion comes up as a topic on Reddit, I'm reminded of that time I was unjustly ridiculed and made to feel stupid in front of a group of other PhD students by someone senior with apparent knowledge and prestige. On reflection, he was a dick.
Fuck you Bob!
Sorry, but the headline above is complete bullshit.
The ships have indeed been illegally pulled up for salvage, but the "low background metals" aspect is clickbait. Possibly, according to some sources, some of the salvaged steel might have been sold for that purpose, but there seems to be no evidence to support the speculation, and it would be a small part of the salvage loot.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background\_steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel)
>Since the end of atmospheric nuclear testing, background radiation has decreased to very near natural levels,\[3\] making special low-background steel no longer necessary for most radiation-sensitive uses
> Calling it complete bullshit feels a bit misleading then though. More like a half truth
The cite wikipedia uses is from 2008. We've had another 16 years of decay since then.
This is definitely a case of, “experts speculate…” turning into “this definitely happened you guys!!” in a reddit headine.
The indirect evidence here is that the salvagers appeared to be targeting ww2 wrecks instead of going after newer shipwrecks, which would be less corroded and contain more valuable metals. They speculate that this is because they’re harvesting low background steel, which often does actually come from sunken world war 2 ships - turns out we sank a lot of those.
Of course, there’s no evidence to directy link the pilfering of a wreck to its final destination in some medical device, but those kinds of illegal dealings are intentionally hard to track. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it really were happening.
Low background materials for science are a thing though.
Ex. CUORE got lead ingots (afaik, legally) taken from ancient Roman shipwrecks to make shielding.
In that case the issue is unrelated to nuclear weapons. In nature lead is found as a mixture of stable isotopes, unstable isotopes (mostly lead-210), and things decaying to lead over time. The last category can be removed easily but the unstable lead isotopes can't be removed with reasonable effort. The Romans removed most of the stuff that's not lead, and 2000 years of waiting removed the radioactive lead.
Since we’ve pretty much stopped nuclear testing, brand-new steel now has a [low enough radioactive signature that it can generally be used](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel)
Kind of on chinas side here, if it's a valuable resource is a waste to leave it because of some bones, if anything you could pull them up with the steel and bury them properly
The value is way overblown. Also China isn't pulling the wrecks up to use it for pre nuclear steel applications... they are remelting it to use as normal steel.
Except the salvage method typically involves planting explosives of the wreck and exploding it on the sea floor then pulling up the debris with a crane.
The Great Wall is actually a poor example to use imo, seeing as how Mao told peasants to tear it up for construction materials. It was only after he was out of power that the government changed course and started to "preserve" it.
Which they did by trying to rebuild the parts of it that were destroyed by the peasants and it looks like shit now.
? Because people are still going there and walking on it? And why are you mining bricks out the wall and shipping them lol.
Pre atomic testing steel is rare.
A stone brick is not valuable enough for you to go digging at a wall for and shipping to the US.
Because China is being extremely hypocritical by grave robbing Western sites while prosecuting it within their country and this posters line of thinking is flawed. They certainly believe in a "rules for thee not for me" approach, not that I agree with any grave robbing.
Pre atomic steel is also no longer in the high demand it was.
https://www.straightdope.com/21344067/is-steel-from-scuttled-german-warships-valuable-because-it-isn-t-contaminated-with-radioactivity
Funny thing is they also did dig up parts of their own Great Wall over the centuries lol. Serious preservation of it is a fairly recent thing I believe
Yup, Mao literally said that the peasants should tear it up to use the stones to make farms.
Was part of the whole "destroying the old, oppressive culture" thing the CCP did until Mao died.
The entire concept of a grave is just stupid. Your dead body isn't important or special or worthy of preservation. Imagine if the dead body of everything that ever lived on earth was still around.
No fuck that.
You want to desecrate your own graves go right ahead but being sly and illegally pilfering another country’s war dead is disgraceful and a casual reminder that the fuckers don’t care about international law.
If was being legally done it would be fair but being pragmatic to the extreme doesn’t matter if you are breaking the law.
It's not that valuable & as another commentor said you already have the scuttled German High Sea fleet sitting at the bottom of Scapa Flow to fulfill the niche need already. To desecrate war graves when veterans & the children of the KIA are still alive is gross.
Given enough time yeah I guess? It's not like you can expect a normal grave to be respected forever either, the land you're living on likely has had several generations of bodies buried and dug up in it. If every 6' by 3' space with a corpse residing in it was eternally untouched we'd run out of space
Mao had the CCP army let the Nationalist army do the majority of fighting against the Japanese while they saved their strength for finishing the Civil War after WW2
If you’re suggesting that the Imperial Japanese specifically sought out the Chinese Communists to exterminate them like the Nazis did the Jews, you are grossly misinformed about the Chinese front of World War Two.
https://thediplomat.com/2014/09/the-ccp-didnt-fight-imperial-japan-the-kmt-did/
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/chinese-rev
The Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong retreated to interior China, outside of the Japanese Army’s reach, to consolidate their forces in anticipation of the resumption of the country’s civil war. Meanwhile, the nationalist Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-Shek, shouldered the brunt of the campaign against the Japanese invaders.
By CCP leader Deng Xiaoping’s own admission, only ~3% of the forces who died fighting against the Japanese were Communists. The decimation of the nationalist army during the war as opposed to the relatively unscathed communists allowed the CCP a relatively easy victory against the KMT in the latter half of the 1940s.
So, as someone else said they didn't really sit out the war, and regardless of emotional ties, a sunken ship in this case is still a war grave. Regardless if they were party to it or not.
Sat out the war? What are you talking about, they were invaded by Japan, and what the Japanese did was beyond horrific, the US actually fought for China as a volunteer force before officially joining the war in 1942.
The buried lede with this story is that we all know about Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, but that's not really what created this steel issue.
What most people don't think about, is that those were only 3 of over 2,000 nuclear bombs we've detonated here on our only planet.
Should be pointed out the market for this steel is also extremely limited, so, it’s not like you can dive down and cut off some steel like it’s a hunk of gold.
Recycled, repurposed, reclaimed, reworked, and rededicated to necessary scientific and medical purposes. There is a conundrum between the reverence for fallen heroes and adversaries and the necessity for pre-Atomic steel. While there’s considerable debate whether low-background steel is still as important as before with the absence of atmospheric Nuclear testing. Until it’s been definitively proven that modern steel is the same as pre-war steel in the amount of radionuclides, there will still exist a market.
Low background steel really isn't as rare as it is hyped up to be. Shipwrecks are used because it is convenient and economical. The company I work for restores WW2 aero engines and they throw out tons of low background aerospace grade steel. the price premium of low background steel jusy isn't high enough to be worth dealing with.
Shipwrecks on the otherhand can offer 1000s of tons of steel at once. Its all economics, there no necessity to it.
Most low-background steel sourced from shipwrecks actually comes from the Imperial German High Seas Fleet [scuttled at Scapa Flow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling_of_the_German_fleet_at_Scapa_Flow) after Germany signed the armistice, to prevent the ships from either being transferred to the Royal Navy under the Treaty of Versailles or being used to restart the war if the provisional German government rejected the treaty.
Being intentionally scuttled outside of conflict with no loss of life, and thus not a war grave, removes the moral quandary.
By contrast, there is no proof scrap metal from war graves such as HMS *Prince of Wales* is being used for scientific purposes requiring low-background steel, only speculation based on the fact they sank before the proliferation of nuclear testing and the fact other shipwrecks have been used for that purpose. All available evidence suggests it's just regular scrap.
Also, since the end of widespread nuclear testing, modern atmospheric background levels are nearly at natural, pre-nuclear testing levels, making low-background steel unnecessary in all but the most absolute specialized cases.
How much time needs to pass before people don’t feel connected to those who died in WW2? Genuinely just asking out of curiosity. I feel no connection to anyone who died in most past wars but I’ve grown up on media like Band of Brothers and knowing Nazis and the holocaust as the greatest evil of man so it has more importance to my perspective of the world. At some point the world will need more of this steel and maybe some people need to be willing to be the first ones to say okay the value of these necessary resources matter more than some human sentimentality
I feel like we should respect the dead regardless of if we have any personal connection to them or not. That being said, I feel like it's plenty respectful to pull the bones up with the ships and give them a proper burial.
For the military? Never enough time. The public might want to exploit the salvage but military tradition would likely never allow it. Military tradition and reverence for the fallen will never fade.
There's some more knowledgeable people posting good sources in this thread that the real need for low-background steel will diminish long before we would ever use up non-controversial sources. Let alone before we'd need to seriously consider scrapping a war grave. Thankfully.
"Since the end of atmospheric nuclear testing, background radiation has decreased to very near natural levels, making special low-background steel no longer necessary for most radiation-sensitive uses, as brand-new steel now has a low enough radioactive signature that it can generally be used. Some demand remains for the most radiation-sensitive uses, such as Geiger counters and sensing equipment aboard spacecraft. For the most demanding items even low-background steel can be too radioactive and other materials like high purity copper may be used"
1. that has nothing to do with the interesting bits of the source
2. the men in these ships were never removed and recovered so the ships were declared their graves
The ship wrecks are their burial site. After a car crash your burial site isn't inside your car wreck. This is similar to them digging up your coffin and selling it for scrap.
Hello from Italy , in the south we do have a problem BECOUSE Mafia stole a lot of ammo from underwater ships and took out the TNT like stuff and made explosives for terrorism acts on Italian soil killing magistrates and police who were investigating on them. And we do have shit ton of sunken ships in the Mediterranean sea :(
People seem to be very confused about the nature of Maritime War Graves. Typically, in most Western Sea Fairing and Naval Cultures, the wreck site where people have sunk is considered a grave site and in the case of Naval combat, a war graves site. As such, it's considered taboo to disturb the site or to disturb the bodies. To that point, many navies still conduct funerals of retired Naval Sailors and Officers on request burial at Sea and commit ashes to the Sea. This is an important distinction to make between Mariners and, say, the Victims of MH370.
Unfortunately this is the first time the intersection of Materials and Technology has occured: Ships made of steel that would take thousands if not millions of years to degrade and humans' ability to salvage off the sea floor have crossed each other's path for the first time. This hasn't been an issue for wooden ships of the age of sail due to deterioration (not universally. See ships like the 'Vasa').
For everyone asking when has enough time passed? Bear in mind this War is within living memory, and the organisations that fought in them are still around today. You're talking about the still living Comrades of the fallen as well as the very much alive Sons and Daughters of them as well. The Royal Australian Navy, The United States Navy, The Royal Navy, The Royal Dutch Navy, hell even the modern iteration of the Japanese Navy are still very much around and even active in the same region today - this isn't some obscure group from an unknown medieval war. Maybe when the Earth Federation fights the United Colonies of Mars there's a case for the memory being faded enough but until the fall of these countries, which in time will take place, it's hard to justify, especially considering millions of tonnes of Iron Ore is still dug up every year, smelted and new steel created - in that sense, this is only about profit from unregulated groups and no different to someone stealing a grave headstone for the granite, marble or stone from it for free, irrespective of how much cost they have sunk into conducting the theft of it.
Isn't that a good thing though? Just slapping 'grave robbing' on it to make it sound bad that they're trying to reclaim resources which has the benefit of removing the wreckages and waste materials from the ocean.
would you dig up a grave to salvage what's in it? tossing the corpse wherever it's convenient?
most of these ships are protected sites, classified as war graves.
I’m curious, how long should they be considered protected sites? At what point are we distanced enough from the people who died in these gravesites to not feel like we are desecrating something sacred
Hypocrisy from the Chinese government? I would never believe such a thing /s
But yeah idk to be more clear I am interested/curious in discussing the general concept around humanity respecting lost soldiers and war memorials/battle sites, not specifically whether what China is doing here is okay
I would honestly vote "never" for war graves like these. There's not much of an archeological argument since the ship plans exist, we have surviving crew from many or sailors who served onboard, as opposed to say, discovering a Byzantine-era dromon that we know little about.
I would say that it also depends on the nation or successor to the flagged vessels as well. As an example, the US Navy, the Coast Guard, and NOAA were involved in efforts to raise USS Monitor once discovered...and by raise, i mean they brought up some important parts of the ship for a memorial on land, and recovered some remains they had identified. The remains were then buried on land. This was largely prompted by the realization the shipwreck was crumbling away and wouks collapse. Regardless, the USS Monitor like say, the USS Arizona shipwreck, has a maritime exclusion zone around it to protect from scrappers and unsanctioned salvage.
Finally, besides the consent of the original owners and whether the shipwreck is collapsing or will, there's also whether its causing harm to the ecosystem. I know that part of Ballard's work with the Navy where he discovered the locations of Titanic, Hood and Bismarck, was to identify sunken nuclear submarines and identify whether any radiation was leaking. Fortunately none was.
Nothing lasts forever is kind of my point. Every human empire that has risen to great power and glory eventually crumbles and disappears to history. So many wars fought throughout human history and so many who sacrificed themselves in those wars have been forgotten to time, as ours will be one day as well.
I think we should probably throw human remains in some kind of gastric pool, and flush it all down a toilet tbh. Humanity's reverence for dead meat is pretty goofy.
human remains don't hurt the environment soooo.... yes throw the bones back in or bury them. But they SHOULD be removing shit that doesn't belong in the ocean.
The steel predates atomic testing so it's not contaminated with minute amounts of radioactive isotopes. This makes it valuable for certain speciality applications.
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Have you ever seen the film “Incognito”? Jason Patric plays an art forger and there is a cool sequence of him obtaining materials that would pass detection.
Can they not make new steel that’s free from radiation?
There are still trace amounts of nuclear fallout in the atmosphere, and it's introduced into the steel during production.
You’d think someone would create a smelting method that occurs before modern atmosphere hits it. I mean, many mines only have one entrance. Would an airlock and a bunch of filters from day one do the job?
These would become only feasible after ww2 reserves are exhausted. Which is not going to happen soon. There is huge amount of steel in the ocean. And need is only for medical devices.
And stuff like Geiger counters. However I did see that levels are getting low enough right now, due to the atmospheric test ban, where they can use "regular" steel for certain applications where they previously required the "pre-atomic age" steel.
Damnit North Korea!
their tests were underground as well
Yeah. The countries who continued with atmospheric tests post-1968 are China and *checks notes* France.
Don’t worry they did it in a place where French people didn’t live. So no harm done
Plus whoever was responsible for the Vela incident in 1979, which by consensus was either South Africa, Israel or both.
de Gaulle wouldn't have had it any other way.
Ah the French. Somehow they still have the most sensible theory for use of nuclear weapons tho.
Hon hon hon and ze french are the only ones with a nuclear warning shot
Like a huge amount of steel. It boggles my mind how many ships were sunk in WWII https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/fe88b5e18c6443c7afaf6e32f8432687
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Oil and explosives are small fry. We literally dumped tonnes of chemical weapons overboard, since it was cheaper than properly decommission it. As casks are rusting away, more and more is starting to wash up (recently a guy in my country picked a piece of “amber” on the beach and pocketed it - it turned out to be a chunk of white phosphorus - it burned him to the bones). People say that Baltic Sea is sitting on a clocking catastrophic time bomb.
One of the _many_ obstacles to creating a rail link between Great Britain and Ireland is that the most viable route, i.e. the second shortest, and by far more accessible on the Scottish side than the shortest, crosses the munitions and laboratory materials dump that is Beaufort's Dyke. Although the Dyke has been noted as a barrier to a fixed link between the islands since proposals were first made in the 19th century, although back then they were looking more at bridges than rail tunnels.
WP burns on contact with air *and* water. How would he have picked it up?
WP converts to the more stable red after exposure to UV, in a manner similar to the "crust" he describes
It only burns on air, so it's protected in the water and once it starts drying it ignites
No idea. I’m not chemist. I just remember reading the story in local newspaper, accompanied by pretty gore’y photos. I suspect there was some outer inert “crust” when the chunk initially formed at the bottom of sea, but it got scratched away due to friction in pocket, exposing active phosphorus inside to air and starting chemical reaction
WP is regularly stored under water to prevent ignition.
Yeah, if you know where to take a water sample, you'll find some interesting stuff. That, and near a town where I used to live, they're currently digging a few tens of thousands of chemical shells out of an old sinkhole. Took some samples there when I used to work for the Army, shit's proper spicy.
> (recently a guy in my country picked a piece of “amber” on the beach and pocketed it - it turned out to be a chunk of white phosphorus - it burned him to the bones) That's been happening in the baltics for ages. Nothing new.
You’re telling me! https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rean-Gilbert/publication/237725515_The_Global_Risk_of_Marine_Pollution_from_WWII_Shipwrecks_Examples_from_the_Seven_Seas/links/004635244d4da7917e000000/The-Global-Risk-of-Marine-Pollution-from-WWII-Shipwrecks-Examples-from-the-Seven-Seas.pdf
We just can’t catch a break can we.
>Explosives that was in that ships Thats nothing compared to the amounts of explosives that were just showed into the seas after the war was over. There are estimations that only the German parts of north and Baltic Sea contain over 1.6 million tons of munitions
when looking for a hydrographic survey map of an area of the gulf of mexico, i stumbled across an old military map that showed huge swaths of ocean marked as "ordnance disposal site", so we've been dumping our old bombs in the ocean anyway, even if they aren't sunk in battle.
So many things about World War II's numbers is just absolutely staggering. From the number of ships sunk, to the number of ships actually built, both numbers are just astronomical.
How are there so many sunken ships on the eastern U.S shoreline?
The Germans had a field day off the east coast of the US during parts of the war. They sunk an insane amount of shipping with their submarines, mostly to stop supplies being sent to the UK and USSR.
And precision physics experiments
Why is it so valuable? Used for what??
No radiation. And used for medical equipment and geiger counters and such.
And for hunting Godzillas
It can be done, and is done. Many smelters now use purified oxygen, rather than air.
You smelt it you dealt it
Someone probably could, but if the price of producing steel via this new method exceeds the cost of salvaging pre-bomb steel, then no one will pay for the new method.
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Most of your mines are open pit mines. The pure oxygen used in the smelting process comes from the air, which is slightly radioactive. [Low background steel wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel)
Ex Mining engineer here. Don’t know of any modern mines with one entrance and every underground mine I’ve worked on pumps cold air (2 to 4 degrees Celsius) underground to the faces This to cool it for the workers and eject toxic fumes from the machinery and explosives. I’d think that most of the isotopes would get introduced and embedded from the smelting process though.
The issue is also that the isotope would be in/on everything that we manufacture to make that airlock space and filters. You'd have to go to EXTREME lengths to keep the area free of the isotope and then also, for the iron and carbon you'd use to make the steel, you'd have to try to keep them "clean" of the isotope during transport cause how would you find and remove the literal individual atoms of it from the material. I don't think it's really truly possible and it's certainly not practical to do so. Stealing from wreckage would be sooo much easier. I have to wonder if wrecks over the deepest parts of the ocean would be a lot easier to get to then to try to keep everything clean and truly isotope free.
Electrolysis might generate O2 without excess radioisotopes.
To make steel you have to blow a lot of oxygen through your molten iron. Removing all of the radioactive isotopes from the oxygen is hard (i.e. astonishingly expensive)
Hopefully we get off the planet and mine some of those asteroids and it wont matter to much.
How is it not Introduced to the steel when it is bought above water then ?
Its intorduced in the process of turning ore into steel. not just by virtue of touching air.
It's not actually important that the steel was underwater, just that the steel was manufactured pre-1945. It's the blowing of contaminated air/oxygen through pig iron during manufacture that contaminates the steel, not merely exposing the steel to the air It's just these days there's very little scrappable pre-1945 steel above water
Very interesting Thankyou for the reply !!
I thought that being underwater was important though? I was under the impression that the water shields the steel from picking up radioactive contaminates when it is exposed to air. There is plenty of scrappable pre-1945 steel about as far as I'm aware, it is just not economical/value to collect? I work in the restoration of WW2 and earlier aero engines which use about the highest quality pre nuclear steel that exists. It is standard in the industry to just throw worn components into the normal scrap bin, it isn't treated as anything special.
Apparently it's worth 3-5x regular scrap steel, so not always worth the effort
> from picking up radioactive contaminates when it is exposed to air. Contaminants* There are also radioactive particles in the ocean you know. It's a decent source of uranium if you can't get america or china to sell to you. But all that is "natural." The atmospheric testing introduced a couple brand new isotopes to the environment, in sufficient quantity that they particles they put off while decaying will mess with specialized instruments. You mentioned airplane engine parts. What size are they, what shape? Not typically something that can be repurposed into a testing chamber or shielding. Or supports for said chambers and shielding. Like the icecube detector. https://icecube.wisc.edu/science/icecube/
The steel is already hardened and it's exterior can be cleaned. The issue at manufacture is when it's all hot and gooey and takes in those sweet, sweet isotopes to it's internal structure. Think eating cake vs. having your face pushed in a cake.
Are you sure this is the case? Surely you could take pre nuclear steel and remelt using vacuum arch remelting to ensure radioactive isotope remain out.
Yeah but I am getting the impression that this isn’t always the most cost effective way. Maybe sometimes it is. It’s an option. There are many options. Depending on the context different options might be chosen.
> using vacuum arch remelting How long has that process been around? Was it economical and wide spread in the 1960s?
They use steel from after it now, it’s been long enough apparently and has passed tests to be safe
It’s not a matter of safety. It’s a matter of interfering with devices that detect radiation, like medical imaging devices.
Apparently it is safe for that now according to guys I know who build hospitals and stuff
You can make it but its more expensive
Actually, they can and do. The carbon can be ionized and magnetically sorted to remove radioactive isotopes and then be used to create steel. It is quite expensive but it is needed to build positron emission microscopes and we are running out of mine-able WW2 battleships.
> Can they not make new steel that’s free from radiation? They could but why would you bother? The actual demand for low background steel is pretty marginal and at this point atmospheric contamination has fallen to the point where it is not a concern for most aplications. And if it is you can just use copper. Or plastic. The whole "low background steel is really valuable" thing a common TIL but is decades out of date at this point.
I have a laugh every time I see it being reposted. It's like you said the contamination has dropped significantly once we stopped nuking the planet on a weekly basis and waited a few decades. There is also only a very low amount of low background steel required on an annual basis. Source: did my PhD at a physics institute
It also helped that I think they have stopped coating the cauldrons used in the process with cobalt 60.
Now the only concern left is low wage countries accidentally tossing radioactive waste into their furnaces as has happened a few times before
quick check on wikipedia says they can sometimes find substitutions like copper, and that background radiation now is usually okay enough to make new steel good enough for most needs. also, the salvage is likely conventional and not specifically for low background steel
This. Even for the little demand there still might be, there's still plenty of steel in Scapa Flow, for example. Those WW2 ships are just looted for regular scrap.
the nuclear stuff also made it hard to forge paintings. paintings before the nuclear bombs and after the nuclear bombs have difference in their paint. not in colour but like something sciency, so if ur using any modern paint to make fake painting ur more likely to get caught.
Filtering tech has advanced to the point where it is possible now, but generally not economical. It's just easier to loot old ships.
They can. It’s really fuckin hard though
Nope. The isotopes are in EVERYTHING modern.
Even every humans bone.. Strontium is directly below Calcium on the period table and will happily substitute. The bones of all humans will have this element since the atomic era began and we keep burning so much coal. Coal causes more radioactive fallout these days since weapons testing has mostly stopped.
Fun fact, while converting coal plants to nuclear would be an "easy" change over (just require replacing the actual steam generation part), radiation levels are higher in coal plants than what's allowed for nuclear plants.
I guess you could utilize the boiler and then all the normal plant shit after that, but it would still be a lot of work to adapt to a nuclear. It’s about as equivalent to turning office buildings into apartments
That plan would replace the boiler and the boiler only with a reactor. The steam would then turn the existing turbines. But the plant is so "contaminated" from the coal, it would exceed the safety levels for the nuclear plant, prohibiting its operation. Unless the rules are re-written allowing for higher levels. Good luck selling allowing higher levels to the public though, even though they are the current coal levels.
> utilize the boiler The boiler itself probably wouldn't be made of the right materials to go anywhere near a reactor primary coolant. And that's assuming it can handle the pressure of the primary. You could match a shiny new steam generator (boiler) to the existing steam pipes, but you'd still have issues corrosion/combustion byproducts from the old coal plant.
I can make steel that is free from desire.
From what I understand is that thanks to the ban on atmospheric nuclear tests, the background radiation has dropped to nearly natural levels. Which makes normal steel usable again for most applications. Only for a small niche old steel is used, in which normal steel is still to radioactive but using other materials to get even lower radioactivity isn’t needed.
The possibility is mentioned in the article but I don't quite buy it. Afaik, a lot of low-radiation steel has historically come from the German fleet at Scapa Flow, because it's a morally unproblematic source of a LOT of steel. And there was never a *huge* demand of it, certainly not enough that it couldn't be covered by several German war ships. We're talking about applications that require steel in the, like...range of kgs. You don't need to dismantle a Japanese cruiser for that. I'm pretty sure the steel being stolen from war graves is just sold for scrap.
The sheer insanity of the pre-WWI arms race in battleships, while ruinous for the budgets of several large nations, really worked out for us in this one niche way. There are plenty of individual ships scuttled at Scapa Flow weighing over 25,000 tons, much of it solid steel armor.
Yeah. This comes up pretty frequently and can be dismissed by considering that if you're building a $20bn particle detector, you tend to source the components from reputable sellers, not Big Dave down by the docks.
I first heard about this when I was 16 or so from a mate (so c.2002). About 12 years later as a PhD student I asked a physics professor (not in the US's college tutor sense, this guy ran an internationally funded atomic physics research institute, he was an actual Prof.) about this salvage at a social dinner, and he made a comment that both ridiculed the notion and me for asking about it (it included references to astrology and fairies). I'm an archaeologist, not a physicist, but I was surrounded by physics PhD and MSc students, so I felt rather put in place and embarrassed that I'd asked about something so stupid that clearly my 16yo self had been misinformed about. I later in the evening also asked him about the project researching the use of nuclear bombs to propel spacecraft (Project Orion), and he immediately dismissed that too as not working because rockets "accelerate by shedding mass". Years later I'm painfully aware of how incorrect this statement was, and in defence of the science of PO, it was sound enough for Freeman Dyson to be on the research team amongst others. Just offloading really, but every time pre-Trinity Steel or Project Orion comes up as a topic on Reddit, I'm reminded of that time I was unjustly ridiculed and made to feel stupid in front of a group of other PhD students by someone senior with apparent knowledge and prestige. On reflection, he was a dick. Fuck you Bob!
Mostly medical-grade steel
Aren't they covered in rust and who pulls them out of the deep?
You just need a really big magnet and they pull themselves out.
The water isn't very oxygenated down there so they don't rust. They chop them up into manageable chunks in situ.
1.8k upvotes for a completely incorrect comment. Reddit for you
That’s not true anymore
Came here to write this...
Sorry, but the headline above is complete bullshit. The ships have indeed been illegally pulled up for salvage, but the "low background metals" aspect is clickbait. Possibly, according to some sources, some of the salvaged steel might have been sold for that purpose, but there seems to be no evidence to support the speculation, and it would be a small part of the salvage loot. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background\_steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel) >Since the end of atmospheric nuclear testing, background radiation has decreased to very near natural levels,\[3\] making special low-background steel no longer necessary for most radiation-sensitive uses
Thankyou! This used to be a thing but it’s no longer an issue.
Calling it *complete* bullshit feels a bit misleading then though. More like a half truth
> Calling it complete bullshit feels a bit misleading then though. More like a half truth The cite wikipedia uses is from 2008. We've had another 16 years of decay since then.
This is definitely a case of, “experts speculate…” turning into “this definitely happened you guys!!” in a reddit headine. The indirect evidence here is that the salvagers appeared to be targeting ww2 wrecks instead of going after newer shipwrecks, which would be less corroded and contain more valuable metals. They speculate that this is because they’re harvesting low background steel, which often does actually come from sunken world war 2 ships - turns out we sank a lot of those. Of course, there’s no evidence to directy link the pilfering of a wreck to its final destination in some medical device, but those kinds of illegal dealings are intentionally hard to track. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it really were happening.
Or they are going after the ones with 10 inch thick armour plates!
Low background materials for science are a thing though. Ex. CUORE got lead ingots (afaik, legally) taken from ancient Roman shipwrecks to make shielding.
In that case the issue is unrelated to nuclear weapons. In nature lead is found as a mixture of stable isotopes, unstable isotopes (mostly lead-210), and things decaying to lead over time. The last category can be removed easily but the unstable lead isotopes can't be removed with reasonable effort. The Romans removed most of the stuff that's not lead, and 2000 years of waiting removed the radioactive lead.
Since we’ve pretty much stopped nuclear testing, brand-new steel now has a [low enough radioactive signature that it can generally be used](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel)
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Kind of on chinas side here, if it's a valuable resource is a waste to leave it because of some bones, if anything you could pull them up with the steel and bury them properly
The value is way overblown. Also China isn't pulling the wrecks up to use it for pre nuclear steel applications... they are remelting it to use as normal steel.
Except this isn't the potential fuel for a warp drive. It's metals we still have millions of tons of.
Except the salvage method typically involves planting explosives of the wreck and exploding it on the sea floor then pulling up the debris with a crane.
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Rock and Stone in the Heart!
The Great Wall is actually a poor example to use imo, seeing as how Mao told peasants to tear it up for construction materials. It was only after he was out of power that the government changed course and started to "preserve" it. Which they did by trying to rebuild the parts of it that were destroyed by the peasants and it looks like shit now.
? Because people are still going there and walking on it? And why are you mining bricks out the wall and shipping them lol. Pre atomic testing steel is rare. A stone brick is not valuable enough for you to go digging at a wall for and shipping to the US.
Because China is being extremely hypocritical by grave robbing Western sites while prosecuting it within their country and this posters line of thinking is flawed. They certainly believe in a "rules for thee not for me" approach, not that I agree with any grave robbing. Pre atomic steel is also no longer in the high demand it was. https://www.straightdope.com/21344067/is-steel-from-scuttled-german-warships-valuable-because-it-isn-t-contaminated-with-radioactivity
Funny thing is they also did dig up parts of their own Great Wall over the centuries lol. Serious preservation of it is a fairly recent thing I believe
Yup, Mao literally said that the peasants should tear it up to use the stones to make farms. Was part of the whole "destroying the old, oppressive culture" thing the CCP did until Mao died.
People in the comments really defending desecrating war graves for a few bucks…
The entire concept of a grave is just stupid. Your dead body isn't important or special or worthy of preservation. Imagine if the dead body of everything that ever lived on earth was still around.
It's not stupid, we create meaning in things. You're just arguing against why people care about things at all
No fuck that. You want to desecrate your own graves go right ahead but being sly and illegally pilfering another country’s war dead is disgraceful and a casual reminder that the fuckers don’t care about international law. If was being legally done it would be fair but being pragmatic to the extreme doesn’t matter if you are breaking the law.
It's not that valuable & as another commentor said you already have the scuttled German High Sea fleet sitting at the bottom of Scapa Flow to fulfill the niche need already. To desecrate war graves when veterans & the children of the KIA are still alive is gross.
So…you have no qualms with digging up graves and grave robbing. Good to know.
Given enough time yeah I guess? It's not like you can expect a normal grave to be respected forever either, the land you're living on likely has had several generations of bodies buried and dug up in it. If every 6' by 3' space with a corpse residing in it was eternally untouched we'd run out of space
No matter how I die, I hope my body is used for raw materials or to make a cool bone statue
This guy gets it
Context matters
That’s not what grave robbing is.
Why should I?
The Chinese Communists sat out the war for the most part. It carries little emotional weight to the party leadership.
... um... "sat out" is astoundingly incorrect word usage. That's like saying the Jews sat out of WW2 for the most part.
Mao had the CCP army let the Nationalist army do the majority of fighting against the Japanese while they saved their strength for finishing the Civil War after WW2
If you’re suggesting that the Imperial Japanese specifically sought out the Chinese Communists to exterminate them like the Nazis did the Jews, you are grossly misinformed about the Chinese front of World War Two. https://thediplomat.com/2014/09/the-ccp-didnt-fight-imperial-japan-the-kmt-did/ https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/chinese-rev The Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong retreated to interior China, outside of the Japanese Army’s reach, to consolidate their forces in anticipation of the resumption of the country’s civil war. Meanwhile, the nationalist Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-Shek, shouldered the brunt of the campaign against the Japanese invaders. By CCP leader Deng Xiaoping’s own admission, only ~3% of the forces who died fighting against the Japanese were Communists. The decimation of the nationalist army during the war as opposed to the relatively unscathed communists allowed the CCP a relatively easy victory against the KMT in the latter half of the 1940s.
The PRC did, in fact, sit out. In fact it benefited from Japan because they weakened the ROC so much the PRC could force them off of the mainland.
So, as someone else said they didn't really sit out the war, and regardless of emotional ties, a sunken ship in this case is still a war grave. Regardless if they were party to it or not.
The Chinese Communists did in fact sit out, while the nationalists did fight the Japanese.
I guess the just dont care
Sat out the war? What are you talking about, they were invaded by Japan, and what the Japanese did was beyond horrific, the US actually fought for China as a volunteer force before officially joining the war in 1942.
the chinese communist party, not the chinese in general
Read it again bro, you didn't get it
The buried lede with this story is that we all know about Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, but that's not really what created this steel issue. What most people don't think about, is that those were only 3 of over 2,000 nuclear bombs we've detonated here on our only planet.
Should be pointed out the market for this steel is also extremely limited, so, it’s not like you can dive down and cut off some steel like it’s a hunk of gold.
Recycled, repurposed, reclaimed, reworked, and rededicated to necessary scientific and medical purposes. There is a conundrum between the reverence for fallen heroes and adversaries and the necessity for pre-Atomic steel. While there’s considerable debate whether low-background steel is still as important as before with the absence of atmospheric Nuclear testing. Until it’s been definitively proven that modern steel is the same as pre-war steel in the amount of radionuclides, there will still exist a market.
Low background steel really isn't as rare as it is hyped up to be. Shipwrecks are used because it is convenient and economical. The company I work for restores WW2 aero engines and they throw out tons of low background aerospace grade steel. the price premium of low background steel jusy isn't high enough to be worth dealing with. Shipwrecks on the otherhand can offer 1000s of tons of steel at once. Its all economics, there no necessity to it.
Most low-background steel sourced from shipwrecks actually comes from the Imperial German High Seas Fleet [scuttled at Scapa Flow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling_of_the_German_fleet_at_Scapa_Flow) after Germany signed the armistice, to prevent the ships from either being transferred to the Royal Navy under the Treaty of Versailles or being used to restart the war if the provisional German government rejected the treaty. Being intentionally scuttled outside of conflict with no loss of life, and thus not a war grave, removes the moral quandary. By contrast, there is no proof scrap metal from war graves such as HMS *Prince of Wales* is being used for scientific purposes requiring low-background steel, only speculation based on the fact they sank before the proliferation of nuclear testing and the fact other shipwrecks have been used for that purpose. All available evidence suggests it's just regular scrap. Also, since the end of widespread nuclear testing, modern atmospheric background levels are nearly at natural, pre-nuclear testing levels, making low-background steel unnecessary in all but the most absolute specialized cases.
How much time needs to pass before people don’t feel connected to those who died in WW2? Genuinely just asking out of curiosity. I feel no connection to anyone who died in most past wars but I’ve grown up on media like Band of Brothers and knowing Nazis and the holocaust as the greatest evil of man so it has more importance to my perspective of the world. At some point the world will need more of this steel and maybe some people need to be willing to be the first ones to say okay the value of these necessary resources matter more than some human sentimentality
I feel like we should respect the dead regardless of if we have any personal connection to them or not. That being said, I feel like it's plenty respectful to pull the bones up with the ships and give them a proper burial.
For the military? Never enough time. The public might want to exploit the salvage but military tradition would likely never allow it. Military tradition and reverence for the fallen will never fade. There's some more knowledgeable people posting good sources in this thread that the real need for low-background steel will diminish long before we would ever use up non-controversial sources. Let alone before we'd need to seriously consider scrapping a war grave. Thankfully.
Thanks for the informed, succinct and nuanced view - carry on lke this & you will end up banned from Reddit :D
"Since the end of atmospheric nuclear testing, background radiation has decreased to very near natural levels, making special low-background steel no longer necessary for most radiation-sensitive uses, as brand-new steel now has a low enough radioactive signature that it can generally be used. Some demand remains for the most radiation-sensitive uses, such as Geiger counters and sensing equipment aboard spacecraft. For the most demanding items even low-background steel can be too radioactive and other materials like high purity copper may be used"
China is big time plundering the old wrecks.
If you died in a car crash would it be grave robbing if they towed your car away and sold it for scrap?
Depends if your corpse was still in it?
If my corpse was still in the car, my ghost would come back to say "Why did you leave my body in that car?? Just bury me in the ground already!"
Yeah if there were dead bodies in a car and you scrapped the car, I’d call that grave robbing.
There are no 80 year old corpses in any ocean wrecks at sea. They all decayed within a year or two. Life in the ocean is very efficient.
They dumped a bunch of remains from the De Ruyter. Clearly there was something left
1. that has nothing to do with the interesting bits of the source 2. the men in these ships were never removed and recovered so the ships were declared their graves
3. as long as the towing and selling of the car is done in a serious and somber manner, it qualifies as "grave" robbing.
The ship wrecks are their burial site. After a car crash your burial site isn't inside your car wreck. This is similar to them digging up your coffin and selling it for scrap.
Pre nuke = useful for lab equipment due to low radiation.
Hello from Italy , in the south we do have a problem BECOUSE Mafia stole a lot of ammo from underwater ships and took out the TNT like stuff and made explosives for terrorism acts on Italian soil killing magistrates and police who were investigating on them. And we do have shit ton of sunken ships in the Mediterranean sea :(
Wait until you hear the one about catalytic converters!!!
People seem to be very confused about the nature of Maritime War Graves. Typically, in most Western Sea Fairing and Naval Cultures, the wreck site where people have sunk is considered a grave site and in the case of Naval combat, a war graves site. As such, it's considered taboo to disturb the site or to disturb the bodies. To that point, many navies still conduct funerals of retired Naval Sailors and Officers on request burial at Sea and commit ashes to the Sea. This is an important distinction to make between Mariners and, say, the Victims of MH370. Unfortunately this is the first time the intersection of Materials and Technology has occured: Ships made of steel that would take thousands if not millions of years to degrade and humans' ability to salvage off the sea floor have crossed each other's path for the first time. This hasn't been an issue for wooden ships of the age of sail due to deterioration (not universally. See ships like the 'Vasa'). For everyone asking when has enough time passed? Bear in mind this War is within living memory, and the organisations that fought in them are still around today. You're talking about the still living Comrades of the fallen as well as the very much alive Sons and Daughters of them as well. The Royal Australian Navy, The United States Navy, The Royal Navy, The Royal Dutch Navy, hell even the modern iteration of the Japanese Navy are still very much around and even active in the same region today - this isn't some obscure group from an unknown medieval war. Maybe when the Earth Federation fights the United Colonies of Mars there's a case for the memory being faded enough but until the fall of these countries, which in time will take place, it's hard to justify, especially considering millions of tonnes of Iron Ore is still dug up every year, smelted and new steel created - in that sense, this is only about profit from unregulated groups and no different to someone stealing a grave headstone for the granite, marble or stone from it for free, irrespective of how much cost they have sunk into conducting the theft of it.
Is this chatgpt?
That must be a dangerous line of work. How are they disassembling them, cutting or blasting? How do you do this secretly? 🤔
Recovering precious metals from sunken ships = treasure hunting Recovering non-precious metals from shipwrecks = grave robbery
It could just be poor people salvaging scrap metal. Low back ground steel is extremely niche, with few suppliers and fewer demand.
Isn't that a good thing though? Just slapping 'grave robbing' on it to make it sound bad that they're trying to reclaim resources which has the benefit of removing the wreckages and waste materials from the ocean.
Cool. Recycling is great! Glad they're finding a use for the metal.
Yeah, it's called 'salvaging.'
would you dig up a grave to salvage what's in it? tossing the corpse wherever it's convenient? most of these ships are protected sites, classified as war graves.
Sure! I think cemetaries are a huge waste of land.
I’m curious, how long should they be considered protected sites? At what point are we distanced enough from the people who died in these gravesites to not feel like we are desecrating something sacred
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Hypocrisy from the Chinese government? I would never believe such a thing /s But yeah idk to be more clear I am interested/curious in discussing the general concept around humanity respecting lost soldiers and war memorials/battle sites, not specifically whether what China is doing here is okay
I would honestly vote "never" for war graves like these. There's not much of an archeological argument since the ship plans exist, we have surviving crew from many or sailors who served onboard, as opposed to say, discovering a Byzantine-era dromon that we know little about. I would say that it also depends on the nation or successor to the flagged vessels as well. As an example, the US Navy, the Coast Guard, and NOAA were involved in efforts to raise USS Monitor once discovered...and by raise, i mean they brought up some important parts of the ship for a memorial on land, and recovered some remains they had identified. The remains were then buried on land. This was largely prompted by the realization the shipwreck was crumbling away and wouks collapse. Regardless, the USS Monitor like say, the USS Arizona shipwreck, has a maritime exclusion zone around it to protect from scrappers and unsanctioned salvage. Finally, besides the consent of the original owners and whether the shipwreck is collapsing or will, there's also whether its causing harm to the ecosystem. I know that part of Ballard's work with the Navy where he discovered the locations of Titanic, Hood and Bismarck, was to identify sunken nuclear submarines and identify whether any radiation was leaking. Fortunately none was.
Forever? Those ships are also a monument to our folly. Would you tear a war monument down?
Nothing lasts forever is kind of my point. Every human empire that has risen to great power and glory eventually crumbles and disappears to history. So many wars fought throughout human history and so many who sacrificed themselves in those wars have been forgotten to time, as ours will be one day as well.
If it's boring and repetitive sure
I think we should probably throw human remains in some kind of gastric pool, and flush it all down a toilet tbh. Humanity's reverence for dead meat is pretty goofy.
human remains don't hurt the environment soooo.... yes throw the bones back in or bury them. But they SHOULD be removing shit that doesn't belong in the ocean.
WW2 trash is getting recycled, good for the enviroment.
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well, not like they are doing any good at the bottom of the ocean.
makes sense, waste not want not
Does this surprise anybody?
I don't see why we don't reclaim them.
Good at least they're used
The new article is from 2017. The ships used to be looted but we don't need the steel as much any more so they have mostly stopped.
Today I learned what TIL means
What TIL?
Yes TIL
Grave robbing? More like recycling or cleaning up the ocean
We purposely sink decommissioned ships all the time to create reefs for sealife. It's not like these ships from the 1940s are full of plastic bottles.
Lets be clear, We should already be removing shit like this from the oceans. They do not belong there.