Originally Posted by
15meter
I recycle the brass on the range at my gun club, I don't worry too much about the odd live primer in the scrap bucket I sell to the scrap man. My brass gets dumped in to a big gondola with a bunch of other brass which moves up the scrap food chain into larger and larger bins/gons/trucks until it gets back to being re-melted. It then gets dumped in to a crucible with tons of other scrap brass. When that primer finally does pop buried down in that crucible I doubt that anyone would notice. I suspect trapped water in brass water fittings would make things way more exciting that a rifle primer.
A couple of years back just to prove to my self that everything I had read about cartridges being pretty innocuous in a fire was true. (find Hatchers Notebook he as a lot to say about ammo/components and fire--great read--just wish who ever I loaned it to would return it:)) I dumped a couple of 8mm mausers in a peach can with a 1/2 cup of gas, lit it and got away. It took AWHILE before there was a couple of pops, no big booms, the can didn't move or get dented. Just the primers and bullets popped out and lying in the bottom of the can.
If it is going into the municipal waste, I suspect the aerosol cans that get crushed in the garbage truck compactor is a lot more exciting.