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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
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).