Science: How to Find Uranium

Uranium, the most sought-after of all minerals, is being feverishly hunted by most big and little nations. A real uranium “strike” would rattle the chandeliers of every foreign office on earth.

Actually, the stuff is pretty easy to find. A just-published booklet (Handbook oj Uranium Minerals by Jack DeMent and H. C. Dake, Mineralogist Publishing Co., Portland, Ore., $1.50) makes it sound as if anyone could go prospecting.

What to look for is uranium’s radioactivity. The best loker is the portable Geiger counter, which finds uranium under the ground as a hog smells out truffles. The prospector carries it over the hills, poking into crevices. In his earphones he hears a few clicks stirred up by cosmic rays and normal earth radioactivity. If the clicks come faster, his heart generally beats faster too. If they swell to a roar, he may be near a uranium bonanza.

Uranium is not an uncommon element, but known big deposits are few. If a prospector should find one of these, his troubles would have only begun. The U.S. (like nearly every nation) regards uranium as strictly Government property. At the end of every Geiger rainbow, an FBI man is waiting.