Why do sunk WW2 ships not have radiation?
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Everything emits radiation my good friend.
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Well, yes.
Why is the steel from ships sunk before the atomic tests so valuable?
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The hell are you reading? 
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Oh oh. I am not sure about steel but nuclear bombs have created new radioactive Carbon-14 isotopes, rendering carbon dating anything biological born or alive after WWII useless.
You know what? I just happened to read something a while back that said the radioactive SPRAY from the ocean stuck to those labrat ships. Is it possible that the salt water stripped the irradiated bits off over time? As we who read books know that dilution is the solution in other cases…like plastic in the ocean and sunlight.
Nuclear bombs, and atmospheric tests thereof. Or lack of them.
I’ve worked it out now.
Reading / watching space battleship yamato?
Likely because low-background steel is needed in healthcare, especially in whole body counting.
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This steel is used in devices that require the highest sensitivity for detecting radionuclides.
Devices that require low-background steel include:
- Geiger counters
- Medical apparatus: whole body counting and lung counters
- Scientific equipment: photonics
- Aeronautical and space sensors
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Cheers, but we figured it out last night. We try to do this without wiki as a game. Radiation could only have entered the steel during production.
OK, another question. If the steel doesn’t have radiation during the production process, how do they avoid this happening when they reprocess it?
They don’t mix it with contaminated steel and clean it, i presume. It’s mostly steel in the 50s and 60s that is high-background, due to cold war testing etc. - you can read up about background radiation peaking from around 1945 and then slowly declining to present day. Those Los Alamos tests and other places caused a lot of dust which basically got blown around all over the place.
The reason WW1 shipwrecks are low background is that they have been under the sea and protected from this contaminating dust.
NSFW and probably offensive to some, but nonetheless a humorous take on the topic:-
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That was my original argument, but it doesn’t make sense.
How does it not make sense?
How does radiation not get into the sea?
Oh, I get it. Radiation in the air enters the production process.
So let’s say there’s a piece of steel made before WWII, how are they not low background steel?
WWII items are fairly plentiful.
Dust in the air.
Shipwrecks are protected by the water
the green bit answers most questions i think