Radiation in the Spotlight

May/June 2011

Detecting radioactive sources and keeping them out of the scrap stream will take attention in the scrapyard and at national and international levels.

By Theodore Fischer

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami that struck the northeast coast of Japan, damaging several reactors at the Daiichi nuclear power plant, has focused the world’s attention once again on the risks of radioactive materials. Though the immediate concern is how the release of radiation from the nuclear plant has contaminated people and the environment in the vicinity, those in the scrap industry might wonder whether the cleanup of the area’s earthquake and tsunami damage—or work on the nuclear plant itself—will result in radiation hazards entering the scrap stream.

It’s too early to answer that question, but the danger of radiation sources in the scrapyard was international news just last year, when scrap workers in Mayapuri, India, cut up a 4-inch-diameter tube made of an unidentified metal and exposed the radioactive isotope cobalt-60. One worker died and five others became sick due to radiation exposure in what the International Atomic Energy Agency (Vienna) called the most serious instance of radiation exposure in the previous three years. The IAEA is aware of 196 radioactive “events” involving scrap in 2009, up from 140 in 2007, though undoubtedly many more such events never get reported. The worst scrap-related radiation incident occurred in 1987 in Goiâna, Brazil, when scavengers broke open a lead-and-steel canister attached to a medical device, exposing a small amount of highly radioactive cesium chloride. The scavengers sold the device for scrap, and over the course of two weeks several scrap workers and their family members handled it or the cesium chloride particles, which attracted interest because they glowed in the dark. The material caused 250 illnesses and four deaths within the first month.

Beyond the human health risks, the economic risks of a radiation incident are immense. “If radioactive scrap makes it out of a yard and then gets included in a melt at a mill, that mill is looking at millions of dollars—if not tens of millions—to get rid of that contamination,” says John Gilstrap, ISRI’s director of safety. The problem and the related costs can extend even further, points out Scott Horne, ReMA vice president of government relations and general counsel. If the radioactive material “gets out of the mill and into a fabricated product, like a refrigerator, it has the potential to harm individuals and the potential to stigmatize the whole line of companies involved and the metal used, to the point of [companies] using substitutes. Everybody in the supply chain has a strongly vested interest in keeping radioactive sources out.”

Other economic risks relate to international trade. Initial reports of the 2010 India incident assumed (incorrectly) that the radioactive source had been imported, resulting in calls for stricter import controls. “Often, when an incident occurs in a developing country, the immediate reaction is that it must be a developed nation dumping [hazards] on the Third World,” Horne says, but radioactive sources are found in developing countries as well—in this case, it was a discarded piece of equipment from Delhi University. “The reputation of scrap metal itself is at stake any time you have a radiation incident,” Horne says. “It gets widespread attention and can stigmatize the global scrap industry [as well as] consuming industries and their products.” That’s why the prevention, detection, and management of radioactive sources that turn up in scrap demand attention in the scrapyard—and at the national and international levels.

Radiation in the Scrapyard

Keeping radioactive materials out of scrap metal is no mean feat. “Radioactive sources—meaning sealed sources—are small pieces of highly concentrated radioactive material encased in steel that are used in a number of industrial and medical applications around the world,” says Eric Reber, a radiation safety specialist with the IAEA who spoke with the magazine in February. In most countries, a government agency licenses and keeps tabs on the purchase, use, sale, or decommissioning of such sources. Inevitably, some sources slip through the cracks, however. They get left behind when a hospital or factory shuts down, after a natural disaster, or when the licensed owner goes out of business, for example, and warning signs or identifying marks on the item can get damaged or removed. These “orphan” sources can “look like a big piece of heavy metal, which is often mistakenly thought of as being innocuous and valuable for scrap metal, so they end up in the scrap metal supply chain,” Reber says.

It takes “multiple levels of protection” to consistently detect radioactive sources that enter a scrapyard, Gilstrap says. “At the very minimum, you need protections for incoming and outgoing scrap to catch the hot stuff one way or the other”—typically via radiation detection devices that scan trucks and railcars loaded with scrap. “Ideally, you have intermediate protection on the conveyors coming out of the shredder,” he adds. “You want to contain that contamination as much you can—it makes the cleanup that much easier.” More and more U.S. scrapyards have such devices, says Ray Turner of River Metals Recycling (Crescent Springs, Ky.), chair of ISRI’s radiation task force. “We’ve got a pretty good handle on radiation protection.” Education is important as well. ReMA has created a radiation safety manual (available at www.isrisafety.org/isri-radiation-safety-manual.html), plus a video, poster, and flashcards to help scrapyard workers identify potential sources and handle any they encounter.

The use of radiation detection equipment—and other policies and procedures for handling a radioactive source—are not consistent worldwide, however. “In more developed countries, such as in Europe, the United States, and various Asian countries, these things are in place, but there are plenty of countries that don’t have these procedures in place at all,” Reber says. Further, Turner adds, not all countries are forthcoming about radiation incidents at scrapyards or consuming mills. “They’re afraid of the economic impact on that country—and there have been some significant economic impacts.”

The Bureau of International Recycling (Brussels), with a membership that encompasses more than 800 private companies and 40 national associations in more than 70 countries, has held several international workshops on radiation over the years, most of them targeted to ferrous scrap processors and consumers. In recent years BIR representatives have spoken about radiation hazards in scrap recycling at industry meetings in the BRIIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, and China. The association also has distributed a poster in Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, and Spanish (available at www.bir.org/publications) that contains pictures of some typical radioactive sources and their warning labels, a detailed gate-monitoring flow chart, and basic advice for dealing with suspect material: “Isolate the suspicious car, van, truck, container(s), or equipment … . Limit your time near a source of radiation since this will reduce the amount of radiation exposure … . Don’t open or destroy any suspicious container under any circumstances.”

National Approaches

As the advice on the BIR poster indicates, there’s widespread agreement on best practices for detecting and responding to the immediate hazard of an orphan radioactive source, but in each country the government bodies tasked with nuclear or environmental regulations must address some tricky questions: Who is responsible for arranging proper management, transportation, and disposal of the orphan source; who bears those costs; and who takes on the liability?

In the United States, the answer depends in part upon the extent of the hazard. Sources that pose the greatest threat come under the control of the U.S. Department of Energy (Washington, D.C.) or the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (Rockville, Md.); state, county, or city radiation-control programs manage lower-level radiation hazards. The Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors (Frankfort, Ky.) operates the NRC-funded National Radioactive Material Disposal Program, to which state, county, and local programs can apply to cover the cost of disposing of an unwanted orphan source when its possessor can’t afford to do so or when the possessor should not be held liable for its disposition. In a June 2007 memorandum describing the program, the CRCPD puts into the latter category companies that do not hold a radioactive material license and come into possession of radioactive material in the course of business—a description that seems to cover scrapyards. The problem with the program, Horne says, is that neither the CRCPD nor the state, county, and local agencies will assume the liability. When scrapyards detect a radioactive source and can’t track it back to its seller, they “often are stuck with paying the disposal cost and assuming liability,” he says.

In Spain, the issues of orphan source management, cost, and liability became a priority in 1998, when some radioactive cesium-137 slipped past monitoring equipment at an Acerinox steel mill in Los Barrios, near the southern tip of the country, and vaporized in the electric-arc furnace. The radiation contaminated 270 mt of material in the dust-collection system, some of which entered the environment before the incident was detected, and it disseminated through the air in a “radiation cloud” detected across several European countries. Though the immediate impact on human health was minimal, cleanup and lost production cost the company the equivalent of $26 million.

In the aftermath, representatives of the Spanish government and the scrap processing and consuming industries drew up the Spanish Protocol, a framework for government agencies and companies to collaborate on monitoring and disposing of unwanted radioactive scrap materials. The protocol spells out the government’s legal authority to manage orphan sources; the role various government agencies will play in the detection and management of such sources; and the responsibilities of companies that voluntarily participate in the program. Under the protocol, the government assumes the cost of managing radioactive sources discovered in domestic scrap; the costs of radiation in imported scrap are the responsibility of the company that detects it. Turner disagrees with this “finder pays” principle. “The ‘polluter pays’ principle should have been incorporated in the contract between the buyer and seller of scrap metal,” he says, “so that costs associated with management and disposal of any radioactive materials found in a scrap metal shipment, and any cleanup costs, are covered by the seller if the original owner of the radioactive material cannot be found.”

The Spanish Protocol has since been held up as a model for other countries’ orphan source control systems, but it’s not the only approach. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (Geneva) has documents describing various other countries’ approaches on its website (live.unece.org/trans/radiation/tools_nbp.html). Under Sweden’s joint liability insurance scheme, for example, scrapyards and steel producers share liability when radioactive scrap metal goes undetected. To participate, Swedish scrap dealers must agree to make every effort to detect radioactive sources before the scrap enters shears, shredders, or melting furnaces. In Bulgaria, where small-scale dealers collect scrap and sell it “oven-ready” to one of three major smelting companies, orphan sources of radioactive scrap of unknown origin become state property and get sent to a state-owned radioactive waste repository.

At the other end of the spectrum, Middle Eastern governments are more apt to leave detection of radioactive materials to the individual scrap dealers. “Our company has been very careful in terms of having all our facilities equipped with radiation detection machines,” says Salam al Sharif, president and CEO of Sharif Metals Group (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates). “We have one or two handheld [detectors] in each of our 11 yards, and we have distributed a lot of handheld radiation detectors to the yards that supply metals to us.” The main deterrent to the proliferation of radioactive scrap in the Middle East might be word of mouth. “As they say, ‘Bad news travels fast,’” Sharif says. “One Indian guy shipped a container out of Jeddah that was [rejected by] Italy, and the whole neighborhood knew about it in less than a week. Everybody thought, ‘It could be me, so why not get a couple of [radiation] detector machines and do it in a systematic way?’”

Two international bodies have turned their attention to orphan sources in scrap in recent years. In 2006 the UNECE published Recommendations on Monitoring and Response Procedures for Radioactive Scrap Metal, a 52-page report of best practices in the management of radioactive scrap sources. With detailed instructions for monitoring certificates of scrap metal shipments, responding to the discovery of radioactive scrap, and reporting discoveries to appropriate authorities, the document identifies the roles and responsibilities of “all concerned parties in government and industry in helping to establish an effective collaborative and unified approach at the national level.” The UNECE’s goal in crafting the recommendations was to increase awareness. “In 2006, nothing on an international basis had been done in this field, and there was not even awareness [of radioactive scrap hazards] in many parts of the world,” says Martin Magold, chief of the UNECE Sustainable Transport Section, Transport Division.

Later this year, the IAEA plans to publish a safety guide on the handling of scrap metal that may contain radioactive material. It provides recommendations to governments on applying radiological safety requirements to the metal recycling industry. The guide advocates a flexible approach that works with local industry and culture. It cites the Spanish Protocol as an example of voluntary cooperation between government and industry, and it recommends a graduated approach that recognizes the difference in resources between large and small facilities. In general, governments should develop policies that “encourage the industry to report on the discovery of radioactive material,” Reber said in a presentation on the guide at BIR’s fall 2010 meeting in Brussels. The guide does not take a position on who should bear the costs of handling radioactive sources that are discovered, but it recommends that governments develop a policy and strategy regarding financial arrangements for the response to—and consequences of—any incident involving such sources. Though the guide is not binding for IAEA member states, it is “the first broad international consensus document to be developed” on the subject, Reber says. “I would like [governments] to look at this and consider the way scrap metal is collected in their country, and whether they have provisions in place that are in line with its recommendations,” he says, citing such areas of concern as employee education, installation of monitoring equipment, what to do when radioactive material is found, and coordination among governmental bodies.

Ideally, governments would better control radioactive materials “so that sources are disposed of properly at the end of their useful lives and never make their way into the scrap recycling stream,” Horne says. That requires “better licensing controls, monitoring of licensees, and enforcement by relevant agencies in each country.” ReMA also would like to see “a viable orphan source program maintained by the relevant agency in each country to take possession of the source, dispose of it properly, and indemnify the scrap processor.”

International Trade Concerns

Increased attention to radiation in scrap is essential at the national level, but this is an international issue as well. “It’s a global problem because steel is traded globally, and it comes from regions—for example, India and the former Soviet Union—where awareness is not at the same level as in the Western countries,” says the UNECE’s Magold.

Recent progress in detecting radiation in international shipments of scrap has come about inadvertently via the global war on terrorism. “We’re doing more and more monitoring of scrap metal shipments because the U.S. government, with its MegaPorts Initiative, is installing portal [radiation] monitors at ports around the world,” Reber says. A Department of Energy program established in 2003, MegaPorts screens containerized ship cargoes for nuclear and other radiological materials, mainly to keep them from reaching terrorists; detecting radioactive scrap is a collateral benefit. Other countries also have taken steps to boost their monitoring of incoming scrap shipments. “A lot of progress was made from 1999 to 2007 in terms of radiation protection for employees at ports and facilities,” Turner says. He singles out for praise the grapple-mounted radiation detector, used on equipment that loads and unloads bulk scrap from barges throughout Europe. “It looks at everything one bite at a time.” And since last year’s Mayapuri incident, the Metal Recycling Association of India (Mumbai, India) has pushed for mandatory installation of radiation detection equipment at all seaports, airports, and inland container depots and has published brochures in local languages to help scrapyard workers identify radioactive scrap materials.

Sadly, governments often don’t turn their attention to radiation in scrap imports until there’s a problem—and then they’re likely to overreact. Certain industrial activities—oil and gas production and burning coal, for example—are known to generate naturally occurring radioactive materials, and scrap from the demolition of such facilities can have higher-than-average radiation readings. At the same time, background radiation levels vary significantly around the world. This can become an issue in the international trade of scrap, Horne says. “When you send material out of [one port], the NORM [in the shipment] might be below background levels, but at the destination port, the background levels are significantly lower, and it gets detected. These incidents draw attention from the media, and regulators overreact to calm the fears of the public.” Officials sometimes decree that scrap imports must have zero detectable radiation, which is impossible to achieve because low-but-detectable levels of radiation are everywhere: in soil, water, food, tobacco, and people. Regulators later “adjust their reactions to reality,” Horne says, but “the time between the overreaction and the adjustment can be weeks or months, disrupting trade and creating raw material supply issues for consuming industries in these countries.”

Of course, implementing policies and enforcing them are not the same. After the Mayapuri incident, “the Directorate General of Foreign Trade has made it mandatory for inspection agencies to guarantee material is free of radioactive sources,” says Zain Nathani, managing director of Nathani Industrial Services (Mumbai, India). “They have to give the actual background reading of the radiation level at the time the scrap is being loaded and also mention the radiation reading on the scrap consignment itself, so every consignment of scrap metal that comes in has to be accompanied by a certificate that has these radiation levels on it.” The big problem now, Nathani says, is that agencies responsible for issuing the mandatory pre-shipment inspection certificates don’t always perform the tests. “A lot of regulation does exist on paper, but it’s really a matter of making sure it can be implemented on the ground,” he says. “That’s the challenge India has.”

The progress made on detecting and managing radiation in scrap is laudable, but there’s a long way to go. A good place to start, Magold says, is with more discussion among the concerned parties. “The nuclear industry only talks to the atomic energy agency and never talks to the metals industry. The scrap dealers don’t talk to either of these guys, even though they’re all part of the loop, they’re all stakeholders,” he says. “What was lacking five years ago when we published our recommendations, and what is still lacking today, is a kind of a forum where all the stakeholders talk together.”

As Ross Bartley, BIR environmental and technical director, puts it, “the recycling industries and their governments around the world are in this together … because governments lost control of [radioactive sources] and the scrap sector and metalworks have the capability to find [them]. …This is, above all, an issue of health and safety. The belief in, and uptake of, compatible national solutions or international agreements will only happen with industry and governments working together at the UN and IAEA.”

Meanwhile, Magold says, “I am just waiting for another incident to come up because metal prices are rising—and the higher metal prices are, the more steel comes onto the market that should never be on the market.”

Theodore Fischer is a Silver Spring, Md.-based writer.