History of uranium use

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 609.

Text 11

The use of uranium, in its natural oxide form, dates back to at least CE 79, when it was used to add a yellow color to ceramic glazes (yellow glass with 1% uranium oxide was found near Naples, Italy). When this was rediscovered, in the earlier part of the 19th century, the world's only known source of uranium 'earths' were the old Habsburg silver mines in Joachimsthal, Bohemia, and the local glassmaking industry kept a tight lid on the secret ingredient and its supply as long as it could.

The discovery of the element is credited to the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who in 1789 found uranium in a mineral called pitchblende. It was named after Uranus the planet, which had been discovered eight years earlier by William Herschel. It was first isolated as a metal in 1841 by Eugene-Melchior Peligot. In 1850 the first commercial use of uranium in glass was developed by Lloyd & Summerfield of Birmingham, England. Uranium was found to be radioactive by French physicist Henri Becquerel in 1896, who first discovered the process of radioactivity with uranium minerals.

During the Manhattan Project, the wartime Allied program to develop the first atomic bombs during World War II, the United States government bought up many reserves of uranium around the world, although the process of enriching it to applicable levels required gargantuan facilities (see Oak Ridge National Laboratory). Eventually enough uranium, mainly from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Belgian Congo), was enriched for one atomic bomb nicknamed "Little Boy", which was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6th, 1945. The other nuclear weapons developed during the war used plutonium as their fissionable material, which itself requires uranium to produce. Initially it was believed that uranium was relatively rare, and that nuclear proliferation could be avoided by simply buying up all known uranium stocks, though within a decade large deposits of it were discovered in many places around the world.

During the Manhattan Project, the names tuballoy and oralloy were used to refer to natural uranium and enriched uranium respectively, originally for purposes of secrecy. These names are still used occasionally to refer to natural or enriched uranium. Less commonly, 25 was used to refer to Uranium-235 by scientists at the Project. The names Q-metal, depletalloy, and D-38, once applied to depleted uranium, have fallen into disuse.

40% of the world's known uranium is located in Australia. The Australian government is currently advocating an expansion of uranium mining, although issues with state governments and indigenous interests complicate the issue.

Uranium ore is rock containing uranium mineralisation in concentrations that can be mined economically, typically 1 to 4 pounds of uranium oxide per ton or 0.05 to 0.20 percent uranium oxide.