a fun fact about this, by the way

the reason we scavenge steel from old shipwrecks is because all modern peoduced steel is contaminated with a miniscule - but still present - amount of radioactive isotopes, incompatible with some incredibly precise scientific instruments and other nieche, but essential applications, that not only require old steel, but old steel that wasn’t exposed to all the radioactive fallout during the nuclear tests in the cold war, hence why the sunken ships.

wikipedia article

adding a personal note here, if some nuclear tests around the world contaminated everything THIS MUCH, what will we say about microplastics in a couple decades? just food for thought