I've been doing some digging, evidently this urban legend has been floating around the brewing community
forever. Besides Nuclear Regulatory Commision, NRC also stands for the NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
And NRC in
packaging terms according to the TricorBraun Corporation whose website says they are;
TricorBraun is the industry leader in the design and supply of innovative rigid packaging solutions. We supply glass and plastic bottles, regular and dispensing closures, sprayers, and other packaging components.
According to their glossary of terms;
NRC
(1) Mandatory embossing on the bottom of steel shipping containers indicating an un-reusable container. (2) Also used to indicate any non-reusable container. (3) A container, often required to be marked NRC, whose re-use is restricted by one or more regulatory agency.
You may not realize it but if you turn over many commercial plastic water jugs, they often say "Not for re-use" on them, in fact, on here, about a year ago, someone bought a better bottle online from one of the web LHBS...It WAS a better Bottle, complete with the label we all know and love, BUT it had the words "Not For Reuse" stamped on the bottom.
He contact Better Bottle directly and it turned out that since they now, in the wake of the BPA recalls for plastic bottles, they have been making many water jugs for Spring Water Companies,
and by law, the ones made for drinking water have to have the "Not for Reuse" etching on the bottom along with the recycle codes. It's the same chemical composition, the
exact same bottle as the brewing ones, but they have to have the ones for water stamped thusly.
And evidently someone mixed up the lines and a few "water" BB's were sent to Lhbs.
More than likely, since, in the old days of 20 years ago or more, the spring water companies, like culligan and absopure, still delivered water in
glass carboys they were bound by whatever federal regulations still require plastic water carboys to carry similar codes.
And since very few companies still deliver water in GLASS carboys, we brewers and winemakers have now access to tons of these things. And probably the Eruopean and Mexican makers of these things today (since no Us company makes them, and I think only France does now) they probably are still required to have them labeled as such if the are imported to the states (but that's just conjecture, it may only be those trasported for WATER and Maybe even the dairy industry if they use them.)
A little common sense here folks....it is very very very unlikely that anyone would use GLASS CARBOYS to hold ANYTHING RADIOACTIVE IN IT.....Things such as that are usually store in LEAD LINED VESSEL to Prevent radiation from escaping.
Carboys are still used in research these days, and usually hold acids and other chemicals, and those are probably bound by NRC labelling as well from either the NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, or may have the Packaging Code NRC as indicate by the packaging code for NON REUSABLE CONTAINER. But not anything that can make us glow in the dark....
Geez, folks, a 10 minutes of googling, especially DEEP into google, past all the conjecture like this thread is quite helpful for
actually learning things, dontjaknow....
Oh yeah it's much easier to conjecture and catastrophize then it is to actually do some digging for yourself.
