VALUE OF RADIUM

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 801, 23 October 1929, Page 11

VALUE OF RADIUM

NEGOTIATIONS WITH U.S. PROPOSED MAY LESSEN COST It is now 31 years since Mme. Curie, following up the discovery by Professor Beequerel, of the radio-active properties of uranium, discovered the wonder-element, radium, and extracted a minute quantity, about the hundredth part of an ounce, from three tons of pitchblende ore. obtained from the Bohemian State mines. Now, 31 years after that epoch-making discovery, about 500 grames (approximately lib! have been extracted all over the world, and some 50 per cent, of this small total is in the United States (says the London "Observer”). England possesses about 25 grammes available for medical purposes, and an}' addition to that supply it is neces-’ sary to obtain from Belgium, where about 40 grammes are produced each year from ore mined in the Belgian Consfb. at a cost of not less than £IO,OOO a gramme. The United States produces its own radium, mainly from the mineral carnotite, which is abundant in Colorado and the adjacent States. The cost of production of radium from carnotite is much lower than from the Belgian ore, and a movement has been initiated to induce the United States Government, through the Bureau of Mines, to carry out research work, with a view to improving the methods of extracting radium, and lowering the cost of production; and if this is done, it is possible that radium might soon be obtained for England from the United States in bigger quantities, and at a much lower cost than is now the case.

Why, it may be asked, is radium so scarce and so dear? The reason is that it is one of the rarest of elements. On the assumption that the earth’s heat is maintained by the presence in it of radio-active substances, it has been calculated that there are probably 270,000,000 tons of radium in the earth’s crust, which seems an ample store on which to draw, as much can be done -with a few grammes. But actually it is equivalent to only five parts in 100 billidn per unit mass distributed uniformly in the earth. The amount of radium in any mineral is proportional to the uranium it contains, the ratio being just over three parts of radium: by weight to ten million parts of uranium. It is this comparative scarcity which makes the extraction of radium from its associated ores so expensive a business, as few radium-boaring ores contain so much as 0.1 grammes a ton. Scientists, miners, laboratory assistants, have all to be paid for their labours, and uuge quantities of chemicals, milling ore, coal!, and other accessories are used before one gramme of radium can be isolated for use. But once obtained, radium is for all practical purposes inexhaustible, as it would take nearly 2,'D00 years for a gramme to shrink to half a gramme. And nothing that can be done to it can retard or hasten its output of energy. In one year a gramme of radium emits as mucin heat as is given out by the combustion of a hundredweight of the best coal, but whereas the coal could be burnt up, if necessary, in a few minutes, the radium would continue its energy output for centuries.

The proved value cif radium for the treatment of cancer and certain other diseases emphasises the pressing need for increasing the amount at present available in England, and the suggested action by the United States Government will, it i:s hoped, have the effect of breaking down the Belgian monopoly, and bring’ the cost of the element within the means of many hospitals and private practitioners at present unable to afford to purchase it.