Science: Radium in Ontario

Because radium is one of the most useful and expensive things in the world, the discovery of even a small new source is more important than the discovery of fields of gold. Last week despatches from Ontario announced that Canadian mine experts had found a. radium mine near Wilberforce. Three years ago miners in the district discovered traces of uraninite (uranium oxide) in pegmatite, a type of rock rich in valuable minerals. Where there is a uranium deposit, mine experts have learned to look for radium. Uranium, producer of radium, is constantly emitting rays, changing its internal structure until it has disintegrated into radium.

Scratching away the loose dirt covering the rocky deposits, miners found a vein especially rich in uranium oxide. Although the extent of the discovery is not definitely known yet, investigation so far has shown it to be a strip from five to ten feet wide and over one mile in length. Uraninite is scattered throughout the deposits.

Soon as news of the discovery spread, people came running with money to buy the mine. One gram of radium sells to-day for from $50,000 to $70,000. A group of Canadian doctors finally succeeded in buying several hundred acres around the discovery. Headed by Dr. Gordon Earle Richards, head of the X-ray department, Toronto General Hospital, and Dr. George William Ross, they organized Ontario Radium Corp. Last year they sent samples of their ore to England. There it was refined, meeting satisfactorily all necessary tests. The doctors found that one ton of their ore yielded 186 milligrams of radium. Belgian Congo mines which have been the world’s richest give only no milligrams per ore ton.

Other radium deposits exist in Czechoslovakia, Belgian Congo, Portugal, Australia, Colorado, Utah. The deposits in Czechoslovakia are almost depleted. Since the discovery of the rich Belgian Congo deposits in 1922, the U. S. production has almost ceased. Up to 1929, because of the great labor and expense involved, only 300 grams of radium had been produced, an insufficient supply for medical men and watchmakers.

While miners and doctors were trying to find radium in Ontario rocks, Mme Curie’s followers in Paris predicted that she will soon have another startling discovery to announce. Meanwhile she sat patiently in her tiny laboratory in the Latin Quarter in Paris, working from ten to 20 hr. a day with uranium oxide to find out more about that queer radioactive family which begins with uranium and ends as lead. Since she knows most about radium she is now studying uranium and polonium, which she discovered in 1898 and named for her native Poland.