Uranium Minerals - Geology Mining and Prospecting: A Strategic metal we need for power and defense

hey i'm chris ralph the professional prospector and today we're going to be talking about uranium and it's different because it's radioactive now uranium is an element with the atomic number of 92 which you know it's the in the list of elements number 92 meaning that the atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons it's the largest element that's naturally occurring in any significant volume there's a a few elements that may be in incredibly small traces that are bigger but uh uranium is the largest that's found in any amount in nature and it's unstable now um uranium is found at low levels in pretty much all kinds of rocks soil water it's considered the 51st most abundant element in the earth's crust uranium is actually more plentiful than a lot of metals that you may have heard of or know about the antimony tin mercury and silver it's about the same abundance as arsenic or molybdenum all of which are well much more better known than uranium now uranium is a silver gray metal but it's always found chemically combined with other elements it's not found in nature as the metal like gold or platinum is its density is among the highest of any metals it's about 70 percent higher than lead and only slightly lower than gold or tungsten uranium is found in hundreds of different minerals and we'll take a look at those when we examine the geology and minerals for uranium now all forms of uranium there's different isotopes they all have 92 protons and 92 electrons but they have different numbers of neutrons that make up the atom now all the different isotopes of uranium are radioactive some are more radioactive than others the most common type which is uranium-238 makes up more than 99 of all natural uranium and it has a half-life or decay speed of 4.5 billion years that means that in four and a half billion years if you had a pound of uranium to start with after four and a half billion years you'd have a half pound and after four and a half more billion or a total of nine you'd have a quarter pound so half of it goes away in 4.5 billion years which makes it a really low level of radioactivity but it is radioactive it's thought that the decay of uranium and thorium and potassium 40 which is another believe it or not all potassium which is something that's required for your body you can't live without potassium all potassium is slightly radioactive so all of that stuff the the radioactivity of uranium thorium and potassium in the earth is thought to be the heat source that keeps the center of the earth the mantle molten and uh that's what drives plate tectonics which forms so many ore deposits and also it drives volcanoes and and that sort of thing now uranium when it decays the radioactivity when the atoms break down they break down into other elements and those other elements at least the initial ones are in turn also radioactive and so the radioactivity of a piece of uranium even if it's been purified will actually increase over time as some of the atoms break down and form these other more radioactive daughter products the discovery of radium which is one of the daughter products of the radioactive decay of uranium-238 the most common atom of uranium the discovery of that by marie curie it sparked all kinds of search for uranium and and that sort of thing and you know they they would process the uranium ore and they really didn't want the uranium they just wanted the radium impurity that was in the uranium ore and so uranium for a lot of years was nothing more than a scientific curiosity you know they really wanted the radium which they used to make glow glow-in-the-dark uh dials and things of course the poor people that processed that radium all got sick and died at a young age because your radium is a pretty strongly radioactive element but anyway for a lot of years they had all this uranium and it was really just a scientific curiosity it didn't have that much use and the only common use of it was they used it because a lot of uranium chemicals are colorful they use their uranium to color glazes that you'd use to color pottery or tiles but then in the beginning in the 1930s because it was the first kind of discoveries that were made they found that a small percentage of uranium and about seven tenths of a percent of uranium is uranium-235 not 238 which is the common one but 235 which is a little bit more radioactive version of uranium but that 235 is what they call a fissionable element that's why it's the nuclear fission metal because you can hit that atom with a neutron and it will break into two pieces and generally the two pieces are kind of random it doesn't always break exactly the same way and when it breaks into the two pieces it releases a few more neutrons uh into the uh space and then a whole lot of energy and the discovery of this initially is what made nuclear weapons possible you see uh uranium-235 is the only naturally occurring fissionable element fissionable isotope now when the atom breaks if there are nearby other uranium-235 atoms the several neutrons that it releases can go initiate the breakdown of another uranium-235 atom and that's why you what they do is they take uranium or uranium metal and they enrich it and they kind of try to separate the 235 from 238 if you separate it into a moderately enriched product then it's useful for nuclear reactors and you can generate power and electricity because like i say when it breaks up you get two different atoms that are highly radioactive you get a few neutrons and a whole lot of energy much of that is in the form of heat now if you were able to take that and you had really highly pure 235 so that each one initiates you know several more fission breakdowns you have a real quick chain reaction because one atom breaks and starts two two star four four star eight eight start sixteen starts thirty two starts sixty four starts 128 starts uh 256 512 you know and it goes on and on and on and on and it quickly because this reaction happens fast that's how they do a nuclear bomb it's that uh chain reaction of these uh neutrons splitting more and more and more and more and more uh that eventually you get an atom bomb however at more moderate concentrations of uranium-235 so they enrich it some but not super huge amounts they don't try to enrich it to near purity they're able to take that and make it into rods like this and they use these rods or rod packets to use in nuclear reactors and so they can control the rate of expansion they have elements in a nuclear reactor to slow it down or they can pull the slowdown pieces out to help speed it up and they're able to control it and keep it balanced and generate a lot of heat which then boils water which then runs a turbine which then generates electricity the other big use for uranium is in the military sector that's not not the weapon you know part of it but is the the use of the depleted uranium it's basically what you take is the normal uranium ore they extract the 235 out of it you're left with mostly pure uranium-238 and then they use that as they use it both for armor piercing bullets because they uh alloy it with a little bit of couple percent of other elements uh to make it harder and because uranium has a tendency to burn in air and because it's so dense it will pierce uh some kinds of armor pier armor plating that is meant to hold back weapons so uh they make the depleted uranium into armor-piercing bullets they also make it into tank armor so because of its density and and hardness you can put plates on removable plates usually on the outside of tanks or other different kinds of vehicles and the vehicle is hardened against different types of attacks so that the depleted uranium will keep uh regular bullets and other things from piercing into the inside of the tank let's talk about mining and prices now now the mining of uranium occurs in several different ways most of the techniques are standard stuff open pit mining like this there's also underground mining and in situ leasing in situ leasing is kind of an interesting thing they basically will drill holes down and extract the material from the ground without actually physically mining it and some mores contain up to 23 uranium oxides uranium ore is crushed and rendered into a fine powder which is then leached by acids or alkalis chemicals that the leachate that comes out of the rock contains the uranium and it's subject to to a number of processes to precipitate it to extract it and using also a solvent extraction and ion exchange types of methods there are several sequences of precipitation but it produces a product called yellow cake which looks like this and the yellow cake is heated to remove any impurities from the milling process before final refining and conversion now the worldwide production of yellowcake from 2013 amounted to over 70 000 tons of yellow cake of which uh 32 percent was mined in kazakhstan another important uranium producing countries include canada australia niger and africa namibia and russia it's estimated that 5.5 million tons of uranium exists in oral reserves known or reserves that are economically viable at about 59 a pound of uranium which we'll see in a second is actually a lot higher than what it is right now now yellowcake prices have fluctuated wildly in recent years uranium went from about ten dollars green a pound in may of 2003 to 138 dollars a pound in july of 2007. this caused a huge increase similar to lithium that i talked about when the price great really went up when the price of uranium went up it caused a huge increase in exploration spending looking for uranium deposits around the world and a lot of good stuff was found prices peaked in 2007 at 140 dollars per us pound but underwent a sharp decline after that and by january of 2010 it had dropped to 41 dollars a pound fluctuations continued and the price of uranium reached a low of less than fifteen dollars a pound in 2016. prices in 2020 fluctuated between about 25 and 30 dollars a pound occurring uranium supplies however don't meet the demands for the existing uranium plants that are out there the uranium reactors the power reactors and so there's a good outlook for uranium in the future when prices get too low of course that eventually attracts more exploration and more mining and reopening of existing plants the current outlook for uranium prices is good although it's incredibly unpopular in the us uranium reactors are seen as inexpensive alternatives to carbon-based power systems by many countries around the world so let's now talk about minerals geology and the deposits of uranium and we'll talk about prospecting too at the end now the minerals of uranium the most important mineral of uranium is pitch blend or uranite it's a uranium oxide that occurs in a lot of the richest uh mineral deposits of the richest deposits of uranium there are a lot of other um commercially important uranium minerals especially oxide minerals found in various kinds of deposits these others include carnotite which is a uranium potassium vandinate davidite bran right which we're going to show you and the samarxite group here's a picture of that it's a uh it's a mineral that includes both uranium and rare earths now bran right here's a picture of it is a uranium calcium iron oxide basically an iron uranium titanate with some calcium and other elements replacing the uranium and some iron it's particularly important because it occurs in up to as up to 30 percent of the mineralization at olympic dam in australia which is actually the world's largest known uranium deposit with the largest reserves of any known deposit on the planet it's it's actually mined principally for copper and gold but because it contains uranium and rare earths and a lot of other things it's mined and work for those minerals as well now a large variety of secondary uranium minerals are known and many of them are brilliantly colored and fluorescent under ultraviolet light and the commonest one is gummite which is a general term for various hydrated uranium oxides with impurities then there's also a uranium phosphate group which includes a tonight and also tobernite tobernite contains copper another is carnotite which is a uranium potassium venatinate and finally here's a hydrated uranium silicate known as coffinite or uranophame is uranophane is another one significant but low-level concentrations of uranium occur in some substances such as phosphate rock that's mined for fertilizer also occurs in lignite which is a variety of coal and monazite which i talked about in the rare earth video it's a heavy mineral that's mined from sands processed for heavy minerals and sand ores and here's a picture of that with some of these byproduct and low levels some ores are processed for other things and because uranium is a byproduct it may be processed with ore that contains as little as a tenth of a percent uranium now for any of you guys that have watched some of my copper lead aluminum lithium rare earth some of these other videos there's a limited number of kinds of deposits that are economic for these metal metals some of them like aluminum there's really only one economic type it's formed from the weathering of certain types of rocks in certain types of environments but uranium is totally different there's all kinds of different uranium deposits there's a huge variety and i'm only going to list 10 but there's way more than that that are economically possibly viable they come in all sizes from really small to really huge there's just a huge diversity in the geology and different types of uranium deposits that are out there geologists classify these into different types and various studies in recent decades have helped classify different types of known uranium deposits there's currently over 40 types and subtypes that are recognized like you say i'm only going to talk about the top ten as you might expect though only a certain few of these are account for the the majority of the production of uranium and today the uh the deposits associated with sandstone and other sedimentary formations as well as ancient unconformities proterozoic unconformities produce more than 75 percent of all the uranium produced in the world so let's talk about my ten different types of uranium deposits the first we're going to talk about is intrusive related and these are type that are related with intrusive rocks including alaska granite pegmatite monzanites and other types of deposits around the world that are related to intrusions of these types of rocks there are examples of intrusive type deposits all around the world including here in nevada there's actually a small uranium mine uh north of me here that was worked many decades ago in uh intrusive rock the second type is called granite related and this includes many vein type deposits in granite granite uh deposits in adjacent meta sedimentary rocks next to intrusions of granite and disseminations that are actually dispersed through the granite the dimensions of these types of deposits have a wide range from veins of pitch blend that are very rich to disseminated deposits and they include various pitch blend filled cracks and and that sort of thing in some types of bodies in europe canada and australia now the third type is i mentioned the iron oxide copper gold and i have a picture of that type of deposit i discussed this in detail in my copper deposit because iron oxide copper gold are important copper deposits as the name implies but they also can have other things in them including gold including rare earths including as we're talking about here uranium the famous olympic dam iron oxide copper gold deposit in south australia accounts for the major part of australia's known uranium resources although it's only recovered as a byproduct with copper horse these types of deposits occur in hematite rich granite breccia and that's how the deposits are formed our next type the fourth is volcanic related uranium deposits of this type occur in and near volcanic calderas and this has also been explored for in nevada i know of a particular instance where they were exploring for caldera related uranium deposits and found a gold deposit not uranium they didn't find any valuable rain and they found gold but that's how nevada is in these volcanic deposits uranium occurs in veins or is disseminated through the volcanic rocks commonly associated with molybdenum minerals or with fluorite my next type the fifth one is metastomites this type of deposit consists of unevenly disseminated uranium and structurally deformed rocks that were affected by sodium and or potassium metasomatism major examples of this type include some deposits in russia brazil the ukraine and australia and canada my sixth type is the metamorphic type and the metamorphic type uranium deposits occur in meta-sediments and or metavolcanics that are unrelated to granite examples include deposits in austria in the democratic republic of the congo in the czech republic in india and in kazakhstan seventh type includes uh proterozeric unconformities and this is an important producer type and uh produces a lot of uranium ore in canada the deposits of the uranium are related to unconformities which is when one type of rock uh is deposited and a time goes by and then another much younger type of rod rock is deposited on top of it below the unconformity usually in the meta sedimentary rocks which host the mineralization are usually found faulted and brachiated and they contain some some of them contain very rich uranium deposits as in the athabasca basin in canada unconformity related deposits constitute about one-third of the western world's uranium resources and they include the largest and richest types of deposits the minerals in them are uranite and pitch blend associated with strong quartz dissolution the main deposits occur in canada like i mentioned the athabasca basin but also and felon basin in the northwest territories also in australia in the northern territories all the canadian production of uranium in saskatchewan over the last 40 years is from unconformity related deposits there's a number of these different mines in the athabasca basin okay my eighth type of deposit is going to be the collapse brecha type and this occur in circular a vertical types of pipes where the structure is filled with coarse fragments of a collapsed breccia with a fine matrix that penetrates through sediments these collapse pipes are from 30 to 200 meters in diameter and go up to a thousand meters deep the uranium mineralization in them is mostly within permeable sandstones and brushes within the pipe the principal types of this uh are found in the grand canyon area of arizona the ninth most important type is sandstone type and these are deposits that occur in medium to coarse-grained sandstones deposited in continental or fluvial margin marine sedimentary environments there have impermeable shale and mudstone units are usually embedded in them and the sedimentary sequence often occurs immediately above or below the mineralized sandstone here's a picture of some carnotite which is the typical ore that is mined in this type of deposit in the united states and these types of deposits were very productive in the united states in the past now these days we'll talk about this in a second we don't produce very much uranium in the us anymore just a tiny tiny tiny percentage of our total needs now sandstone deposits constitute about 28 of the world's known uranium resources and about 40 percent of the inferred likely resources there are major economic important in kazakhstan the usa and niger or bodies of this type are commonly low to medium grade and they are small to medium in size ranging up to a maximum about 50 000 tons of uranium roll front types are mined by in situ leech methods literally you can we talked about this earlier you drill a hole down and leach the material out of the rock and then suck it back up through other holes and you basically have mined the uranium out of the material which is only a small percentage without having to actually dig it out of the ground the usa has large resources of this type in the western mountain region and most of our uranium production historically has been from these kinds of deposits the 10th most and the our last is the paleo quartz pebble conglomerate this is the kind of deposit that's mined at the waters ran gold areas in south africa now you normally think of what waters ran as a gold producer and of course it is but it produces some significant by-product uranium now the quartz pebble conglomerates from this are all ancient they're all really old new conglomerates are not likely to have this kind of deposit these are things that are 2.3 to 3 billion years old and basically formed by the water transport of various minerals this is how waters rand is supposed to have been formed originally and here let me show you a picture of what the ore looks like rare earth and thorium may also be present in these kinds of rocks where uranium is recovered as a byproduct of gold mining and other operations like at the was waters ran in south africa the grade may be very low as as low as a 1 100 of a percent uranium but since they're already mining it digging it out of the ground and crushing it to extract the gold the additional step to extract the uranium is really not that big a deal it doesn't cost a lot of money now as i've kind of mentioned here in this video the u.s was once a major producer of uranium we produced enough for our needs we even at one time exported some uranium but no longer we now produce only a tiny tiny percentage of what we need for our power plants because we do have uh nuclear reactor power plants in the us and uh there are also military needs that i've mentioned our 2019 production of uranium was three tenths of one percent of what we need so three thousandths of the total that we need that's really bad we're dependent on other countries to produce that for us or be able to give it to us and yet it's a critical defense and power type of need now the colorado plateau the area of where uranium has come from i have a map of that so take a look at this drawing this it shows some of these sandstone sedimentary rock hosted uranium deposit if you're interested in prospecting for uranium because like i say the price is uh outlook is good and there are uh you know these types of deposit stone deposits it is possible to mine them and extract the uranium without actually digging or breaking any rock just by that in-situ borehole type of you pump a fluid through that dissolves the ring uranium out of the rock and then suck that fluid back up and process the result that's how almost all of the uranium mines in the united states currently operate so it is possible to mine uranium in the united states in these days it is the areas that i showed you on that map that are the most likely to be producers of uranium in the future now one of the critical items for being a uranium prospector if you want to go out and find uranium is the the geiger counter here's what one looks like geiger counters basically count the radioactive decompositions of uranium and other elements geiger counters just don't con uh count uranium they count any other elements that are radioactive and decomposing so if there's thorium or other things the famous rare earth deposit that i mentioned in my rare earth video at mountain pass was found by a guy with a geiger counter who was looking for uranium he found something radioactive he thought he was in great shape but found out later it was thorium and rare earth and only later did that become valuable so geiger counters are important they are a critical key if you want to go prospecting for uranium and you know you'd use it to to sample rocks to see whether or not they're radioactive now they're not cheap but they certainly are available they can't be purchased they exist so there you have it uh that's basically the important uh uranium issues the properties the mining and the minerals the geology and the deposits now next week we're going to talk about nickel and cobalt which are the other important lithium battery metals now you think of lithium yep you need lithium for lithium batteries of course but the other part of the battery is also nickel and cobalt and these are important and we're going to talk about these metals and how we're going to talk about their minerals and geology deposits how they're used and that sort of thing next week now most of my videos and i'm going to be getting back to gold pretty quick here but most of my videos are about prospecting for gold and i if you want to get the skills of being a better prospector and go out and find gold i've written a book about prospecting for gold and i'm going to tell you a little bit more about my book right now so let me tell you a little bit more about my book um it's called fistful of gold and i wrote it because i want you to be able to go out and find for yourself this full of gold and uh you can see that it's a an encyclopedia with all kinds of information pictures and that sort of thing it's not in color but uh the color would have cost me a lot more to have printed and so the book would have cost a lot more it's for sale on amazon and you can pick it up i'll put a link in the description below i also serve as the editor for a prospecting magazine it's icmj's prospecting and mining journal and honestly you should check that out we got stories and information legal stuff everything you know to increase your skills as a prospector i write articles in this every month and a lot of other very experienced prospectors contribute to the magazine as well so check the magazine now also i have a website and the website is at nevadaoutbackgems.com i'll put a link for it in the description below but there's gogs of information there that you will find useful in your prospecting efforts finally i want to say that i really appreciate your comments and thoughts and even a positive criticism don't come on there and just toss out insults because i'll just delete your comments but if you've got helpful things to say and questions to ask do write and and put those in the comments because i answer my comments to people and uh you'll hear from me in you know in responding to you uh so if you've enjoyed this video and you like what you see and you're interested in uh finding out more well then sign up subscribe and hit the uh the notification bell so they'll let you know when i post new videos and you know like it and share it if again you you see stuff that you really are excited about and i'll be coming out with lots more new videos and so we'll see you again real soon

Channel: Chris Ralph, Professional Prospector

Views: 12,784

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Id: qnYeUPl05ZI

Length: 33min 42sec (2022 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021