New Jersey officials have debunked claims that drones were deployed to search for missing radioactive material from a shipping container, following social media speculation linked to reports of mystery drone sightings.
The shipment was a piece of medical equipment called a pin source, which contains a radioactive component commonly used to calibrate PET scanners. The pin source has since been recovered.
The rumor gained traction online and was echoed by Belleville Mayor Michael Melham during a Tuesday interview, when he suggested the drones, which have been spotted over several eastern states in recent weeks, might be involved in a search.
“In my opinion, they’re looking for something,” Melham said. “There is an alert that’s out right now that radioactive material in New Jersey has gone missing on Dec. 2. There was a shipment that arrived at its destination. The container was damaged and was empty.”
Melham told CBS News he used the instance as an example of what the drones may be looking for. “My point is, they are flying in a grid-like pattern, in my opinion, sniffing for something,” he said.
A spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection told CBS News that the material in question has been recovered and drones were not part of the recovery operation.
The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday issued a notice restricting drone flights over nearly two dozen towns in New Jersey until Jan. 17.
Claims of missing radioactive material in New Jersey
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a report on Dec. 13 that said medical equipment from Nazha Cancer Center in southern New Jersey had been “lost in transit on December 2” after the shipping container “arrived at its destination damaged and empty.”
Kalman Rosenfeld, a radiation site manager at Nazha Cancer Center, told CBS News that the equipment has arrived at a disposal facility in Knoxville, Tennessee.
The shipment contained trace amounts of Germanium-68, a “very low-level radiation source” permitted to be shipped through common carriers, according to the NJDEP.
The department said the device was misplaced at a FedEx shipping facility before it was located on Dec. 10, repackaged and sent back to the manufacturer.
How the theory spread online
On Dec. 14, John Ferguson, the CEO of an unmanned aircraft systems manufacturer based in Kansas, posted a TikTok video that suggested the drones may be detecting gas leaks or radioactive material on the ground.
Podcast host Joe Rogan reposted the video and said, “This is the first video about these drones that has got me genuinely concerned.”
Ferguson’s video has circulated widely across social media, amassing more than 30 million views on X and thousands of users’ engagement, with some users linking it to the missing shipment.
However, Ferguson does not mention the shipping container, and he told CBS News he did not know about the shipment until after he made the video.
“I have heard about the medical equipment that came up missing in a shipping container,” Ferguson said. “I do not know much about it, but I do know that that is not a part of my video or anything that I have done to date.”
Government response to nuclear emergencies
A spokesperson from the National Nuclear Security Administration, an agency under the Department of Energy that works with the nuclear stockpile, told CBS News that the administration is not engaged in any operations involving radiological or nuclear threats.
Additionally, their specialized Nuclear Emergency Support Team uses aircraft rather than drones to detect nuclear or radiological substances.
Researchers from the federal energy department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that drones have the potential to conduct detection of low levels of radiation across survey sites, but more studies are needed before the devices are approved for use in decommissioning.
The FBI has received more than 5,000 tips about drone sightings in recent weeks, according to a joint statement released on Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the FAA and the Department of Defense.
Emma Li is a fact checker for CBS News Confirmed. She covers misinformation, AI and social media.
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