Pitchblende -- Rocks and Minerals Series #6

NOT RECOMMENDED AT NIGHT; THIS AREA IS RURAL RESIDENTIAL AND LIGHTS WILL ATTRACT ATTENTION. STEALTH REQUIRED.

BE SURE TO GET THE SINGLE DIGIT CLUE ON THE LOGSHEET FOR THE ROCKS AND MINERALS SERIES FINAL CACHE.

Welcome to the Rocks and Minerals Series, where you can learn a little about geology and find some caches at the same time. Each of the six caches named after rocks and minerals has a single digit on the logsheet that you will need to find the Rocks and Minerals Final Cache. For example, in the Ryolite cache, the Clue will be R = (some digit); in the Quartz cache, the clue will be Q = (some digit).

The final is at N 38 56.RQA W 105 17.FGP

Here are all seven caches in the series:

Ryolite (GC9NYB3)

Quartz (GC9NYB6)

Agate (GC9NYB8)

Feldspar (GC9NYB9)

Granite (GC9NYB7)

Pitchblende (GC9NYBA)

And then – Rocks and Minerals Final Cache (GC9NYBB)

From Wikipedia: Uraninite, formerly pitchblende, is a radioactive, uranium-rich mineral and ore with a chemical composition that is largely UO₂ but because of oxidation typically contains variable proportions of U₃O₈. Radioactive decay of the uranium causes the mineral to contain oxides of lead and trace amounts of helium. It may also contain thorium and rare-earth elements.

Uraninite used to be known as pitchblende (from pitch, because of its black color, and blende, from blenden meaning "to deceive", a term used by German miners to denote minerals whose density suggested metal content, but whose exploitation, at the time they were named, was either unknown or not economically feasible). The mineral has been known at least since the 15th century from silver mines in the Ore Mountains, on the German/Czech border. The type locality is the historic mining and spa town known as Joachimsthal, the modern day Jáchymov, on the Czech side of the mountains, where F. E. Brückmann described the mineral in 1772. Pitchblende from the Johanngeorgenstadt deposit in Germany was used by M. Klaproth in 1789 to discover the element uranium.

All uraninite minerals contain a small amount of radium as a radioactive decay product of uranium. Marie Curie used pitchblende, processing tons of it herself, as the source material for her isolation of radium in 1910.

Uraninite is a major ore of uranium. Some of the highest-grade uranium ores in the world were found in the Shinkolobwe mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the initial source for the Manhattan Project) and in the Athabasca Basin in northern Saskatchewan, Canada. Another important source of pitchblende is at Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada, where it is found in large quantities associated with silver. It also occurs in Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, England, Rwanda, Namibia and South Africa. In the United States, it can be found in the states of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina and Wyoming. The geologist Charles Steen made a fortune on the production of uraninite in his Mi Vida mine in Moab, Utah. Uranium ores from the Ore Mountains (today the border between the Czech Republic and Germany) were an important supply of both the wartime German nuclear program (which failed to produce a bomb) and the Soviet nuclear program. Mining for uranium in the Ore Mountains (under the auspices of SDAG Wismut after the war) ceased after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic.

Uranium ore is generally processed close to the mine into yellowcake, which is an intermediate step in the processing of uranium.

Congratulations to YamaGypsy and Clusteryfunkery for being FTF !