AUSTRALIAN RADIUM FIELDS SITUATED IN REMOTE DISTRICTS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6843, 22 February 1929, Page 9

AUSTRALIAN RADIUM FIELDS SITUATED IN REMOTE DISTRICTS

Would Working be Economic Proposition? SYDNEY, JAN. 31. With radium being quoted as worth £500,000 an ounce—say, for a teaspoonful —some surprise has been occasioned in Australia because a doubt has bed raised in England whether tiho working of tiho Commonwealth fields would be an economic proposition. It is a fact, however,, that the fields are in very remote districts, and the costs of treating the oro are said to bo enormous. In in of importance to know that the newspapers in England arc discussing the matter.

The demand for Tadium is increasing all over the world, mainly because of tho encouraging results which have followed its uso in certain cases of cancer. It was hoped three years ago that the fields which are situated in South Australia would bo able to supply tho precious metal in reasonably adequate quantities, but these hopes have not been borne out, Even now work on the deposits have been temporarily suspended owing to the lack of capital for the extension of tho treatment operations.

The parent company in South Australia for the recovery of radium is the Radium and Rare Barths Treatment Company, at Radium Hill, near Olary, about 50 miles west from Broken Hill. This company has treatment works at Dry Creek, a few miles from Adelaide. Tho second group of radium deposits, worked by three companies, is at Mount Painter. This is a lone region, nearly 100 miles distant from. Copley, on the long trunk line sitretching from Adelaide to Oonnadatta, and about 250 miles from Adelaide. These fields have been favourably reported upon by Sir Douglas Mawson and Dr. W. T. Cooke, the mineralogist of the Adelaide University. The Mount Painter mine is placed high up in rugged mountainous country, and the only possible way to get the ore down to the concentration plant for the first step in its treatThcre are several other places in the ment is by camel. teams.

more remote areas of Australia at which indications of radium have been observed. Up in the far north of Cape York the Myall natives relate stories of a peculiar glow of light emanating from the ground in a hillside, and scientists suggest that this may indicate a body of radio-active ore. Similar manifestations have been observed in the neighbourhood of extensive pitchblende deposits in other parts of the world. The actual amounts of radium present in a ton of pitchblende—of carnotite, as the ores are called—are seldom more than a grain or so, and to obtain this minimum quantity, not only must it first be converted into various salts and compounds, but different impurities such as lead, calcium, and potassium have to be eliminated.

Australia's deposits of radium ore have been described as the richest and most extensive in the world, and it is unfortunate that, although these deposits are of an extremely high standard or purity, thoy should be situated in such remote regions.