A radiation safety officer discovered a closed eBay listing out of Hartselle, Alabama, on Sept. 16, 2026, offering an M67 mortar sight unit and M58 and M59 aiming post lights — military optical parts originally built to hold up to 9 curies of tritium apiece. The listing had already closed by July 10, and the data plates that would confirm whether the tritium sources are still installed were not visible in the posted photos. The equipment’s radiation safety officer referred the case up the chain of command and to the Army legal department to trace how it reached a public auction site.
Tritium is a mildly radioactive form of hydrogen used to keep military optics readable without batteries or external light, glowing continuously inside sealed glass vials for years. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission classified the discovery as a non-emergency “Potential Lost or Stolen Source” event, a category reserved for licensed radioactive material that has left an approved holder’s control without documentation of where it went.
An M67 sight built to hold 5.79 curies across twelve vials
The M67 mortar sight, used with 120mm mortar systems, carries tritium in twelve separate vials sized for different scales on the instrument — a coarse azimuth scale and fine azimuth scale each holding 1.0 curie, two level vials at 0.4 curie each, a fine elevation scale at 0.1 curie, and two reticle vials at 0.05 curie each — for a total of 5.79 curies per sight unit, according to an NRC radiological health assessment of the device. The M58 and M59 aiming post lights listed alongside the sight originally held either 5 or 9 curies of tritium each, separate self-luminous components used to mark reference points for mortar crews at night.
The Army has tracked the M67 program under its own federal paperwork for years; NRC filings on the sight’s design show it operating under NRC Registration Certificate NR-0155-D-126-S and NRC License 12-00722-06, the kind of registration meant to keep tritium-bearing military hardware accounted for from manufacture through retirement.
Why investigators still do not know if the tritium is inside
Whether the specific parts listed on eBay still contain their original tritium sources is, as of the report, unresolved. The NRC’s event notification report states plainly that “it is unknown if the items contain the tritium sources at this time, but the data plates were not visible in the listing photos” — the plates being the identifying tags that would show whether the vials had been removed before sale.
That distinction carries real weight for anyone who might have bought or handled the parts. The M67 assessment found that a tritium vial’s rupture risk depends entirely on how the phosphor coating inside is disturbed: a slow gas leak from a cracked vial delivers a negligible dose, but crushing a vial and exposing its phosphor without protection could deliver as much as 19.33 rem to someone handling it directly. A properly sealed sight sitting in storage, by contrast, poses essentially no exposure risk at all — which is why confirming whether the sources are still installed and intact matters more than the parts simply having changed hands.
An Army legal review into how the parts left military control
Investigators have not yet determined which branch of the military the equipment came from. The event report attributes prior ownership to “either the Army or Marine Corps” without settling on one, leaving the parts’ full ownership history unresolved even as the legal referral moves forward. What the radiation safety officer has set in motion is narrower: a referral asking the Army’s legal department to establish “the providence of the items and if they were legally obtained and sources removed prior to selling on eBay,” in the report’s own wording.
Military tritium devices are supposed to be demilitarized and their radioactive sources removed by a licensed handler before any surplus equipment is released for public sale or disposal. A tritium exit sign, the more familiar consumer version of the same technology, is governed by parallel NRC rules requiring licensees to report any sign that goes missing and to route it to an authorized recipient within 30 days of discovery, rather than to ordinary trash collection or resale, because a damaged vial can spread contamination that then requires professional cleanup.
Nothing in the report indicates the Hartselle listing was ever completed as a sale, only that it had closed by the time it was found. Whether that means the parts went unsold, sold to a buyer who has since been contacted, or moved through some other channel entirely is left open, and the record does not name a seller, a buyer, or the price the parts were offered at.
The equipment’s low hazard tier — tritium sources of this size fall well short of the top categories NRC’s own radioactive-source classification scale reserves for material capable of causing fatal exposure within minutes — is likely why the case was logged as a routine non-emergency report rather than triggering a public alert. Event 58452 remains open, with the Army’s legal review the only stated next step and no eBay buyer, seller, or intermediate owner yet identified in the record.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
More from Morning Overview
- A handful of car engines are so tough mechanics say they almost never wear out
- The NSA is again telling phone owners to switch off one location setting
- Supplements now rank as the fifth-leading cause of death from liver disease.
- Herbal supplements are landing Americans in the hospital with liver damage, doctors warn
