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AW: [Fwd: [Know_Nukes] (NYT) Navajo Miners Battle a Deadly Legacy of Yellow D...



Ruth,
I am really surprised that yellow cake is spread over the Navajo reservation. This must have happened recently, because I have also travelled extensively since 1988 in the Southwest, or to be more precise in Utah, Arizona and little in New Mexico and Colorado on several occasions and did not see any "yellow" dust on the landscape. Even more I think that uranium mining has been finished since long in this area and in the meantime rain should have removed the "yellow cake". The uranium mine which I visited in 1988 mined pitchblende containing ore and this ore was shipped far away for the production of yellow cake. To my knowledge there cannot have been many factories producing yellow cake in this area and Moab is not in the Navajo reservation.....
 
I am a subscriber to Arizona Highways and the beautiful  r e d  sandstone of northern Arizona and Utah so well shown in excellent photographs sure contribute to my decision to visit this area this fall again.
 
Conclusion:
 
What to think of such a message?
 
Franz
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu [mailto:owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu]Im Auftrag von RuthWeiner@AOL.COM
Gesendet: Montag, 19. Mai 2003 07:00
An: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
Betreff: Re: [Fwd: [Know_Nukes] (NYT) Navajo Miners Battle a Deadly Legacy of Yellow D...

I will try to make this brief:

1.  I have traveled extensively in the Southwest  including a lot of time on the Navajo reservation (the Big Reservation) .  The rocks and the desert are not  yellow, but the typical orange-red of sandstone.  Sandia (the name of the mountain behind my house) means "watermelon" in Spanish, and that is the color of the mountain in the setting sun.
2.  Uranium minerals come in a variety of colors. Uraninite, the mineral generally found in the southwest, has different colors depending on the trace elements present.  Pitchblende (which is black) is a form of uraninite.  Uranium-doped quartz is orange, and looks like dark topaz (I used to have a pair of earrings of U-doped quartz).  "Yellowcake" is almost 100% UO2, and the crystals of UO2 are black (See Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary, 12th edition).