Radioactive Scrap Forces Timken Faircrest Mill Shutdown

The Timken Company (USA) will be forced to shut down at least some of its massive Faircrest Steel Plant after radiation monitors detected cesium-137 in an exiting shipment of hazardous waste. No one was exposed to the radioactive material, stressed Timken and the Ohio Department of Health. "This was a totally contained event," said an ODH spokesman. Timken said the cesium-137, a common industrial and medical isotope, came in with a shipment of scrap metal. They believe the small amount eluded scans of incoming material by being encased in lead or shielded by the shipment's other contents. Cesium is a naturally occurring metal, properly called cesium-133, a soft silvery white-grey substance. Cesium-137, however, is an artificial radioisotope, created when uranium-235 is split in a nuclear fission reaction. Amounting to 6% of the yield from a fission reaction, cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years. Cesium-137 was deposited worldwide as fallout from above-ground thermonuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, it is a commercially viable byproduct found in nuclear power plant waste. Cesium-137 is stable and relatively inexpensive, used in a wide array of industrial instrumentation, such as level and thickness gauges, and moisture density gauges. There are approximately 20,000 such industrial gauges in use across the United States today. Steelmakers, such as Timken, use perfectly safe high-precision radioisotope gauging in advanced manufacturing and quality control systems. Cesium-137 and its decay product, barium-137-metastable, are also used in systems which sterilize foods such as wheat, flour and potatoes. It is perhaps best appreciated for its use in cancer treatment. Timken's Faircrest operation is a hot-melt shop; the cesium-137 was flashed off (vaporized) in the scrap melt and trapped in the furnace's bag house by the closed-loop evacuation system. It is not in the steel or in the slag. Along with all the other contaminants trapped the same way, the cesium-137 was then transferred to and encapsulated in the outgoing hazardous waste shipment. Scrap melting operations at Faircrest will be shut down for at least two or three weeks for cleanup; the extent of the melt or casting operations' shutdown has not yet been determined. Several dozen scrap metal radioactive material contamination incidents have been reported worldwide over the years. In the U.S., these events have almost always involved a gauge finding its way into a scrap metal shipment. None of the incidents have ever involved Timken, and there are no reports of related worker injuries in the U.S.. The American Iron & Steel Institute estimated the average cleanup takes three weeks and costs $8 million to $10 million. Although Timken said it has insurance to cover the cleanup costs, the business interruption and customer service costs may be far higher. Reportedly operating at or near capacity, the loss of any Faircrest output will have a significant, but yet unknown, impact on Timken Steel's financial results. The company's stock price slipped more than 5% on the news and is expected to trade lower until the full impact can be determined.