Oddly, I had heard that old battleship steel - from before the development of atomic/nuclear weapons - was highly valuable for non-radioactive shielding material.
This video does a great job explaining how the Trinity explosion - and subsequent open-air, atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons - polluted any steel made after those tests via the Bessemer process for producing steel from pig iron and using atmospheric air.
I did not know, however, that the battleships scuttled at Scapa Flow had subsequently been salvaged and some of the steel used in this way. (As an aside, your friendly, neighborhood blogger has visited Scapa Flow. It's gorgeous.)
And I also didn't know that the demand for this low-background steel has mostly been superseded because of the switch from Bessemer to basic oxygen steel production.
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