RADIUM

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 136, 10 June 1937, Page 4

RADIUM

THE CANADIAN FIELD

EXPERIMENTAL STAGE OVER

REFINING PROCESS

(From "Tha Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, May 11.

The King George V Fund for Cancer Research enhances the value to the Empire of the world's largest known deposits of pitchblende, which contains radium. These deposits lie in the hills beside Great Bear Lake, on the edge of the Arctic Circle. The

story of their discovery is the most romantic chapter in Canada's mining' history.

At the turn of the century two Dominion officials, a mineralogist and a geologist, were examining the Great Bear country, and noted in their report the presence of cobalt bloom. Thirty years later a young prospector, Gilbert La Bine, seeking information at Ottawa about that region, came across the report. Knowing the connection between cobalt bloom and silver, he went there and located both. La Bine was puzzled by a strange ore with which the silver was associated. After some months it was identified as oxide of uranium, the mother of radium. He staked all the land in the vicinity... ■ ■

g When the Canadian discovery was 2 noised abroad, scientific circles were ; frankly sceptical because of the in 5 credible -statement that this subArctic structure showed pitchblende I- so rich that a gramme of radium . could be recovered from 6| tons of it. I Last October, six years after La Bine's ; discovery, Canadian production got j out of the experimental stage; by that . time one ounce, or 28 grammes, had . been refined. To fill present orders , now in hand it will be ■■• necessary to refine 50 grammes this year. Canada's , new industry brought the price down from £10,000 to £6000 a gramme. There are rumours that recovery of the [ Belgian Congo deppsits has ceased, as I being commercially, unprofitable. EASILY-WORKED MINE. In the.El Dprad'o mine at Great Bear • Lake .miners are working at the 250 ft i level. Little or no timber is required i for supports. The ground is frozen to '■ a depth of 350 feet, and the workings • are absolutely dry. In typical radiumi bearing ore, the rock is a dull, vapid . grey, soaking up ( the light from the i miners' lamps like a sponge. The vein material.is bright brick-red, hard and' glistening. Up the face.of it, in narrow, slanting ribbons, are clear-white ; stringers which:'are calcite, and coalblack ones which are.pitchblende.' If the light catches it from exactly the correct angle, the pitchblende has a noticeable lustre. Indians traditionally insisted that there was a'peculiar smell to the atmosphere at La Bine Point. , After the discovery they decided it was due to radium, a theory which caused some merriment, especially since no white mian had observed the scent. But when the Indians declared that there was a similar smell at a " point oh Beaver Lodge, about a-hundred miles southward, one prospector listened. With Indian guides he made the trip in winter, and marked the location. When the snow cleared away in the spring, pitchblende was definitely found. ••■■■-' AT THE REFINERY. In the refinery,: at Port Hope, Ontario, 4000 miles from 'Great Bear Lake, the physicist can, by the aid of his * electroscope, detect the presence of . one one-hundred-millionth, of .a gramme, 'thereby ' ensuring that 'no radium escapes. FiveV hundred thousand parts of barium must be separated from a single part of radium. After 48 refinery workers have spent' four weeks in producing a few crystals, a solitary scientist, working only a few days a. month with the high-powered fragments, completes the job.

The delicate final concentration'is made in a glass-topped dabiriet with a protective lead shield across the front, and a special ventilating system to draw off the gas. There are openings to admit his hands, protected' by rubber gloves. On'a single, small hot plate he continues .the procedure, v of reducing' the, Ib'arium content, starting, with small-beakers, ending'with a Amy dish of pure silica, little more than an inch high. It is/; hermetically sealed in; minute glass ! tubes, ,y. within,.,»,. few. seconds.of the'completion of the":, pro-i cess. .These tubes are; stored in a' block of lead. They -are slightly smaller than a match, ■ each holding one-tenth of a gramme of radium, retailed to hospitals at £ 600, at the .present world price.