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Drones were not used to find radioactive material lost in New Jersey | Fact check

Joedy McCreary   Paste BN
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The claim: Drones deployed in New Jersey to search for missing radioactive material

A Dec. 16 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) links the drone sightings across the eastern U.S. to the search for a radioactive isotope that briefly went missing in New Jersey.

"Drone Mystery SOLVED?" the post's text reads in part. "U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports radioactive material LOST in New Jersey. 'Radioactive Shipping container arrived at destination damaged, empty'. Military drones are sniffing for spill site."

The Instagram post received more than 400 likes in three days. A similar version of the claim circulated widely on Facebook.

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Our rating: False

No drones were used in the search for the substance, according to a spokesperson for the New Jersey agency in charge of overseeing its recovery. The first drone sightings predate the misplacement of the substance by two weeks.

No drones used in search for missing radioactive isotope

The image in the post shows a screenshot of a report filed with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission after a trace amount of the radioactive isotope germanium-68 went missing from a shipping container in early December in New Jersey.

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But the claim that drones were involved in looking for it is baseless.

No such aircraft were used to locate the material, Caryn Shinske, a New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson, told Paste BN. Shinske's agency is the one responsible for overseeing the recovery of any missing nuclear materials, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesperson Neil Sheehan told Paste BN, citing a decades-old agreement between New Jersey and the federal government covering the oversight of those substances. Additionally, the National Nuclear Security Administration – the division of the Department of Energy that manages nuclear security programs – does not use drones in any of its searches for nuclear or radioactive materials like the one described in the claim, according to a Dec. 17 ABC News report.

The widespread drone sightings across New Jersey and the Northeast predate the misplacement of the germanium-68 by two weeks. According to an NBC News report, they were first spotted in that state on Nov. 18 – 14 days before the substance was reported missing. Authorities investigating the reported drone sightings have found no evidence of nefarious or threatening activity, instead explaining them as drones used for commercial, hobbyist or law enforcement purposes, manned aircraft and stars.

The claim references the report submitted after the Nazha Cancer Center in Newfield, New Jersey, notified the state Department of Environmental Protection that the germanium-68 it shipped for disposal was lost in transit Dec. 2, and its shipping container arrived at its destination damaged and empty. The state agency filed its legally required report to the federal commission Dec. 5.

The substance was found Dec. 10 at the FedEx shipping facility where it had been misplaced, and it was then repackaged and sent to its Tennessee-based manufacturer, Shinske said. The report was updated Dec. 17 to include those details and to declare the case closed.

Germanium-68 is commonly used to calibrate medical imaging scanners and to create other isotopes used in nuclear medicine studies. The item in question – described as a "pin source" – measures 6 inches in length and 1.5 millimeters in diameter, Shinske said. It was classified on the report as being below Category 3 level on the radioactive scale, meaning it is “very unlikely” to cause permanent injury, the document states.

Paste BN previously debunked false claims that a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed drones were from space and an image shows a crashed drone in Alabama.

Paste BN reached out to multiple social media users who shared the claim but did not immediately receive any responses.

PolitiFact debunked a version of the claim.

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