Radium Hill

Minerals of the third group of Table 5.15 contain relatively small proportions of tetravalent uranium combined with a refractory oxide of titanium, niobium, or tantalum. To free the uranium from these minerals, they must be leached with hot, concentrated sulfuric acid. Davidite is one of the principal ores at Radium Hill in South Australia. Brannerite is found in the Blind River district of Ontario. Pyrochlore occurs in the Lake Nipissing district of Ontario and in Nigeria. 

Digestion with hot sulphuric acid of moderate concentration is used at Port Pirie in South Australia. The ore, mined at Radium Hill, contains the refractory mineral davidite which does not respond to leaching with dilute acid in the usual way. The high acid usage is justified by the fact that the ore, mined at a grade of about 0-25 per cent, is concentrated by flotation and heavy media separation to about 1 per cent before acid treatment. 

Almond, J. N. Treatment of Radium Hill concentrates for the recovery of uranium. Australian Atomic Energy Symposium. Melbourne University Press (1958). 

Titanium can sometimes behave in a similar manner to silica, i.e. the oxide deposits physically upon the resin beads. This occurs, for example, at the Port Pirie refinery in Australia which uses the Radium Hill Davidite ore containing titanium. The effect has been considerably alleviated by reduction of the acid usage at the ore leaching stage, thus preventing much of the titanium from reaching the resin. 

This leaves us with the brine as the major radium source. This source must remain speculative for now as there are no appropriate samples presently available from this area although high radioactivity (presumably radium) has been reported from oil-field wells further west in Kansas (Gott and Hill,... 

Clark, C. Radium Girls Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910-1935. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1997. 

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