Uranium Mining - History

History

Uranium minerals were noticed by miners for a long time prior to the discovery of uranium in 1789. The uranium mineral pitchblende, also known as uraninite, was reported from the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains), Saxony, as early as 1565. Other early reports of pitchblende date from 1727 in Joachimsthal and 1763 in Schwarzwald.

In the early 19th century, uranium ore was recovered as a byproduct of mining in Saxony, Bohemia, and Cornwall. The first deliberate mining of radioactive ores took place in Jáchymov, also known by its German name Joachimsthal, a silver-mining city in what is now the Czech Republic. Marie Curie used pitchblende ore from Jáchymov to isolate the element radium, a decay product of uranium; her death was from aplastic anemia, almost certainly due to exposure to radioactivity. Until World War II uranium mining was done primarily for the radium content. Sources for radium, contained in the uranium ore, were sought for use as luminous paint for watch dials and other instruments, as well as for health-related applications, some of which in retrospect might have been harmful. The byproduct uranium was used mostly as a yellow pigment.

In the United States, the first radium/uranium ore was discovered in 1871 in gold mines near Central City, Colorado. This district produced about 50 tons of high grade ore between 1871 and 1895. However, most American uranium ore before World War II came from vanadium deposits on the Colorado Plateau of Utah and Colorado.

In Cornwall, the South Terras Mine near St. Stephen opened for uranium production in 1873, and produced about 175 tons of ore before 1900. Other early uranium mining occurred in Autunois in France's Massif Central, Oberpfalz in Bavaria, and Billingen in Sweden.

The Shinkolobwe deposit in Katanga, Belgian Congo now Shaba Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was discovered in 1913, and exploited by the Union Minière du Haut Katanga. Other important early deposits include Port Radium, near Great Bear Lake, Canada discovered in 1931, along with Beira Province, Portugal; Tyuya Muyun, Uzbekistan, and Radium Hill, Australia.

Because of the need for the uranium for bomb research during World War II, the Manhattan Project used a variety of sources for the element. The Manhattan Project initially purchased uranium ore from the Belgian Congo, through the Union Minière du Haut Katanga. Later the project contracted with vanadium mining companies in the American Southwest. Purchases were also made from the Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited company in Canada. This company had large stocks of uranium as waste from its radium refining activities.

American uranium ores mined in Colorado were mixed ores of vanadium and uranium, but because of wartime secrecy, the Manhattan Project would publicly admit only to purchasing the vanadium, and did not pay the uranium miners for the uranium content. In a much later lawsuit, many miners were able to reclaim lost profits from the U.S. government. American ores had much lower uranium concentrations than the ore from the Belgian Congo, but they were pursued vigorously to ensure nuclear self-sufficiency.

Similar efforts were undertaken in the Soviet Union, which did not have native stocks of uranium when it started developing its own atomic weapons program.

Intensive exploration for uranium started after the end of World War II as a result of the military and civilian demand for uranium. There were three separate periods of uranium exploration or "booms." These were from 1956 to 1960, 1967 to 1971, and from 1976 to 1982.

In the 20th century the United States was the world's largest uranium producer. Grants Uranium District in northwestern New Mexico was the largest United States uranium producer. The Gas Hills Uranium District, was the second largest uranium producer. The famous Lucky Mc Mine is located in the Gas Hills near Riverton, Wyoming. Canada has since surpassed the United States as the cumulative largest producer in the world.