Missing radioactive material in New Jersey sparks drone theories

A New Jersey mayor warned Tuesday that the troubling drone sightings over the state may be linked to missing radioactive material, although federal officials say the amount poses no serious threat either way.

Belleville Mayor Michael Melham said the drones flying in a grid-like pattern over his Essex County township appear to be “looking for something.

“What might they be looking for? Maybe that’s radioactive material,” Melham told Fox TV’s “Good Day New York.”

“It was a shipment. It arrived at its destination. The container was damaged, and it was empty,” Melham said.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued an alert earlier this week regarding a piece of medical equipment used for cancer scans that was “lost in transit” Dec. 2. while being shipped from the Nazha Cancer Center in Newfield in Gloucester County in southern Jersey.

The device, an Eckert & Ziegler model HEGL-0132, was to be properly discarded — but its “shipping container arrived at its destination damaged and empty,” the agency said.

The item, known as a “pin source,” contains a tiny amount of the radioactive chemical Germanium-68, which is used in PET scanners to calibrate accuracy.

The radiation source is deemed less than a Category 3 on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s scale — which means it is “very unlikely to cause permanent injury to individuals or contain a very small amount of radioactive material that would not cause any permanent injury.”

News of the missing equipment caused alarm on social media, with some netizens speculating that the enigmatic drones patrolling New Jersey’s skies are frantically scouring the area for the radioactive waste.

The unfounded theory was also propagated by John Ferguson, CEO of a remote-aircraft-system company in Kansas, who claimed in a video viewed nearly 3 million times on X that the drones are trying to “smell” a gas leak, radioactive material or something else.

“The only reason why you would ever fly an unmanned aircraft at night is if you’re looking for something,” Ferguson said in the clip, noting he doesn’t believe the drones are a threat to the public.

The idea gained further traction when podcast king Joe Rogan said Ferguson’s clip left him “very concerned” about the drone situation.

Tri-state residents and lawmakers have been fuming over the lack of explanation from the federal government over the alarming drone sightings, which have been reported for a month now.

The Biden administration has repeatedly downplayed the situation. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby has said the drones are not a public safety concern and that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft.

The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI announced Monday they are belatedly deploying drone detection technology and infrared cameras to determine what, if any, threat the unidentified flying objects pose.