Do You Remember The Uranium Boom?

Smiling Jane said:
Most of my memories are about burying uranium miners who died from that stuff. A friend's father died a couple of years ago of cancer from mining uranium.
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Miners had long-term exposure to large amounts of material. Prospectors don't have that problem.
 

Yes, I remember the era. The prospectors used Scintillators and Geiger Counters. I have a Geiger Counter and a radioactive mineral sample.

The Scintillator detected Gamma radiation from a distance, while the Geiger Counter measured the Alpha radiation from the ore sample.

There are many radioactive minerals beside Uranium. They are all above 92 on the Periodic Chart of the Elements.

Uranium is important because it has the highly fissionable isotope U-235, which is used as bomb material.

This isotope occurs in just 0.7% of natural Uranium U-238. By far the greatest cost of the Manhattan Project was in seperating
U-235 from U-238.

The Hiroshima bomb ("Little Boy") contained 140 pounds of weapons-grade U-235, but only 3 pounds actually fissioned!

Yet this was enough to flatten Hiroshima and kill 70,000 Japanese civilians in a split second from heat, radiation, and blast.

The cost of the uranium for Litttle Boy was $500 million in 1945 dollars.

(The red-colored parts "S" and "H" represent the U-235 that destroyed Hiroshima.)

Hal
 

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Big Horn said:
Miners had long-term exposure to large amounts of material. Prospectors don't have that problem.
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I agree. Apparently it took a while to get all comfortable and settled in their lungs. Nasty stuff.

I've visited the Trinity site. It still feels very eerie. Visitors tend to be very subdued so I think they all feel that.
 
The father of an old employer of mine was a scientist who won a Nobel Peace prize for his work with cyclotrons. He worked with Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project.
 
Smiling Jane said:
The father of an old employer of mine was a scientist who won a Nobel Peace prize for his work with cyclotrons. He worked with Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project.
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That sounds like it must have been Dr. Ernest O. Lawrence, who built the giant 4000-ton Cyclotron at Berkeley, and whose invention of the Calutron made it possible to seperate the rare isotope U-235 from natural uranium U-238.

It was U-235 that was used in the Hiroshima bomb I have shown in schematic form.

Hal
 
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HiDesertHal said:
Yes, I remember the era. The prospectors used Scintillators and Geiger Counters. I have a Geiger Counter and a radioactive mineral sample.

The Scintillator detected Gamma radiation from a distance, while the Geiger Counter measured the Alpha radiation from the ore sample.

There are many radioactive minerals beside Uranium. They are all above 92 on the Periodic Chart of the Elements.

Uranium is important because it has the highly fissionable isotope U-235, which is used as bomb material.

This isotope occurs in just 0.7% of natural Uranium U-238. By far the greatest cost of the Manhattan Project was in seperating
U-235 from U-238.

The Hiroshima bomb ("Little Boy") contained 140 pounds of weapons-grade U-235, but only 3 pounds actually fissioned!

Yet this was enough to flatten Hiroshima and kill 70,000 Japanese civilians in a split second from heat, radiation, and blast.

The cost of the uranium for Litttle Boy was $500 million in 1945 dollars.

(The red-colored parts "S" and "H" represent the U-235 that destroyed Hiroshima.)

Hal
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That is fascinating. I found two copies of the book on Amazon in new condition. They were priced at 662.69 and 669.87. That may not indicate anything so I'll keep looking. I have a copy of Ignition, a book on liquid rocket fuels published in 1972 which I bought it new at the time. The price rose to stratospheric levels until the recent announcement of a reprint.

My main interest is in the history of the prospecting which is something that I love. My experience has been almost solely placer mining of gold, but it all fascinates me. I heard about a book called simply Uranium which deals with the history of the metal including the boom. Unfortunately, nothing matches the title nor can I find anything that seems to match the description I received. I only see my informant occasionally and I can't even remember his surname. USGS released a booklet, later evolving into a book. There were three editions between 1949 and 1957. I have the last edition.

Botanical prospecting seems practical as well. I have one publication from USGS which is fascinating.

As I said, gold has always been my favorite. I love the history of gold mining as well. Agricola's De Re Metallica is extraordinary. Translated from Latin by former president Herbert Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, it's the standard today. Herbert Hoover was no stranger to Classics nor was his wife a stranger to Geology. He did most of the work of identifying sixteenth century terminology. I believe that Hoover was the only U.S. president who had ever conducted a scholarly project of this magnitude. He and his wife published it sixteen years before his election.

https://smile.amazon.com/Re-Metalli...id=1514613628&sr=1-2&keywords=de+re+metallica

I recommend Biringuccio as well. He goes beyond the mine to fabrication. This work combines my interest in mining and metallurgy to me interest in Arms and Armor.

https://smile.amazon.com/Pirotechni...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=YNKZPXR0RVNVAETGEN4F
 
Smiling Jane said:
I agree. Apparently it took a while to get all comfortable and settled in their lungs. Nasty stuff.

I've visited the Trinity site. It still feels very eerie. Visitors tend to be very subdued so I think they all feel that.
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Yep...July 16, 1945, at 5:30 AM Mountain Time. It was the first nuclear device tested. It had a critical mass of 11 pounds of Plutonium Pu 239, and released an estimated energy equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT.

Hal
 
Cornwall in South West England is a place where
Uranium can be found.

I heard a while ago that there was a large deposit,
seam found and it was to be mined soon, but I can
find no reference to it, it was either a hoax, or has
gone very secret.

Mike.
 

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