October 31, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



617 



A price of $95 at Hamburg for 2 per 

 cent, ore leaves a fair margin of profit to 

 the miner, as mining profits go, but when it 

 is considered that this price represents only 

 a little over one tenth of the value of the 

 radium content of the ore and that from 

 this fraction of the value the American 

 miner has to meet the outlay represented 

 by the investment, by mining costs, trans- 

 portation and assay costs and by losses in 

 transit, it seems scarcely just that nearly 

 nine tenths of the value should go to for- 

 eign manufacturers of radium, especially 

 when the fact is considered that radium can 

 be produced much more readily from car- 

 notite than from pitchblende. There are 

 two ways of reducing this difference be- 

 tween the actual value of the ore and the 

 price that the miner receives. One is to 

 hold our American ores for a higher price, 

 and the second is to manufacture radium at 

 home. 



Large wastes are still taking place in the 

 mining of camotite, owing to the inability 

 of the low-grade ores to bear transportation 

 charges. As has already been pointed out, 

 however, a distinct improvement in this 

 respect has taken place within the last few 

 months. The miners are beginning to 

 realize the value of their old dumps and are 

 attempting to save the low-grade, non-ship- 

 ping ore in such ways as will render its 

 marketing possible when prices advance. 

 The Bureau of Mines has done everything 

 it can to impress the necessity of this truest 

 kind of conservation upon the mine 

 operator. 



In addition, there is prospect that most 

 of the low-grade ores can be successfully 

 concentrated by mechanical methods and 

 experiments at the Denver office of the 

 Bureau of Mines indicate that a concen- 

 tration of four to one can be obtained. In 

 this concentration, however, there are losses 

 which could be prevented by chemical con- 



centration, but at the present time it costs 

 more to ship the necessary chemicals to the 

 mines than it does to ship the ores to places 

 where these chemicals can be cheaply ob- 

 tained. It would appear, however, that 

 mechanical concentration can save at least 

 one half of the material that is now going 

 to waste. 



Although, until recently, the manufac- 

 ture of radium has been carried on almost 

 wholly in France and Germany, there ap- 

 pears to be no good reason why our Ameri- 

 can carnotite should not be treated at home. 

 Carnotite is much more easily treated than 

 pitchblende and the essential features of 

 methods for its chemical treatment are well 

 known, although much of the mechanical 

 detail of operation has been kept secret. 

 As the mechanical requirements, however, 

 are those which any well-grounded chemical 

 engineer should be able to solve, there seems 

 to be no good reason why any of our carno- 

 tite ores should be shipped abroad, even at 

 two or three times the present market price 

 of the material. As before stated, the 

 essential features of chemical methods of 

 extracting radium from its ores are well 

 known. As regards the principles involved, 

 the methods have advanced little beyond 

 the original method published by Debierne. 



The methods for camotite may be de- 

 scribed best in the words of Soddy, in an 

 extract from ' ' The Chemistry of the Radio 

 Elements," by Frederick Soddy, page 55, 

 published in 1911 by Longmans, Green & 

 Co. 



The most important operations in the working 

 up of radium-containing materials are the solution 

 of the materials, consisting usually of insoluble 

 sulphates and the separation of the halogen salts 

 of the alkaline-earth group in a pure state, fol- 

 lowed by their fractional crystallization. The first 

 operation is usually effected by vigorous boiling 

 with sodium carbonate solution, filtering and wash- 

 ing free from sulphate. This is the well-known 

 reaction studied dynamically by Guldberg and 

 Waage, whereby an equilibrium is attained be- 



