DEMAND FOR RADIUM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20175, 8 February 1929, Page 13

DEMAND FOR RADIUM.

DEPOSITS IN AUSTRALIA.

ENORMOUS WORKING COSTS.

VERY REMOTE LOCATIONS

[FROM OVTI OWN CORRESPONDENT. ]

SYDNEY, Jan. 31

With radium quoted as worth £500,000 an ounce—say, for a teaspoonful—some surprise has been occasioned in Australia because a doubt has been raised in England whether the working of the 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 ore are said to be enormous. The demand for radium is increasing all over the world, mainly because of the encouraging results which have followed its use 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 the precious substance in reasonably adequate quantities, but these hopes have not been borne out. Even now work on the deposits has been temporarily suspended owing to the lack of capital for the extension of the treatment operations.

The parent company in South Australia for the recovery of radium is the Radium and Rare Earths Treatment Company, at Radium Hill, near Oiary, about 50 miles west from Broken Hill. This company has treatment works at Dry Creek, a few miles from Adelaide. The second group of radium deposits, worked by three companies, is at Mount Painter. This is a lonely region, nearly 100 miles distant from Copley, on the long trunk line stretching from Adelaide to Oodnadatta, 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 oro down to the concentration plant for the first step in its treatment is by camel teams. There are other places in the 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—or camotite, as the ores are called—are seldom more than a grain or so, and to obtain this minute quantity, not only must it first bo converted into various salts and compounds, but different impurities, such a3 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 of purity, they should be situated in such remote regions.