Structural Engineering: Chinese Steel

The recent posts on Chinese steel mostly dealt with strength and weld quality, but there are environmental issues too. (I know you all have lots of time on your hands to think about this). If you do a little Googling, you will find many interesting tidbits about the occurrence of radioactive steel from China.

Last March, Italian authorities seized 30 tons of Chinese steel that was contaminated with radioactive material. There are other stories

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-03-03-radioactive-steel_N.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7967285.stm

There have been issues in Europe with radioactive steel from India

http://www.hindu.com/2009/03/02/stories/2009030255471100.htm

http://www.thelocal.se/15154/20081023/

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,607840,00.html

And here with steel from Mexico

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/06/us/us-and-mexico-cooperating-to-restrict-radioactive-steel.html

This can be a problem with scrap in our own country. See article below

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2002/07/radioactive-recycling

We have even shipped contaminated scrap to China, where it was use to manufacture radioactive steel that they sold back to us