#uranium ore

I got to play with some uranium ore today!

The defeater of my GMC 600+; this thin slice of almost unphotographable Uraninite that really likes to throw off the colour balance on cameras. It's difficult to see, but there are tiny little botryoidal spheres in the area where its black colouring is most intense.

Inside of plastic box reading, 10cm away (GQ 600+):

3,850cpm

Exposed, out of box reading, 10cm away:

42,100cpm

Right on top of mineral!:

188,000cpm

Unfortunately, the geiger counter is completely overwhelmed by the activity from this piece and is dropping counts after a minute of reading, so it's likely a bit higher than the numbers written. I will measure again when I buy my Radiacode 103.

New Safe Confinement, mini-edition.

After running my little piece of Moab uranium ore under the Geiger counter last week and watching it go a little crazy, I decided that maybe keeping it in the tiny plastic baggie it came in from the shop wasn't the best idea.

So, I ordered some thick glass specimen jars and they finally arrived. Put on my heavy duty particulate respirator, took my little baggie full of radioactive rock outside where there was plenty of ventilation, and carefully transferred it from the plastic baggie to the jar.

Turns out there was a fair amount of dust in the bag, so I was glad I opted for a mask. While this uranium ore generally only emits alpha particles, which are reasonably safe as they cannot penetrate the skin, they CAN still be dangerous if ingested or inhaled. Hence the mask and the open area for the transfer.

It's now safely contained in the jar, and properly labeled for safety in case I keel over dead one day and somebody's gotta go through my stuff.

I ran the Geiger counter over it in the jar afterwards and it barely blipped. Certainly nothing dramatic like it did before. A good, practical example of how easy it is to block alpha particles.

Dorothy Madigan reading about uranium ore in Life magazine while at the beauty salon

Autunite on Limonitized Matrix displaying fluorescence

Locality: Le Boucheron, Davignac, Corrèze, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France