Word: ores
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...businessmen a dazzling glimpse into uranium's future. After "phenomenal development" in discovery and mining since 1948, said AEC's Raw Materials Chief Jesse Johnson, uranium prospecting, mining, milling and construction have become a $100 million-a-year operation. The U.S., which imported 90% of its uranium ore before the Korean war, may soon become the world's biggest uranium producer...
...peak in sight. Despite the upswing in uranium strikes (TIME. Jan. 31), AEC needs still more ore, estimates that most known deposits will be exhausted by 1962. Said Johnson: "A high rate of discovery will be required to maintain scheduled production levels." Although at least twelve ore deposits containing 100.000 or more tons each have been discovered since 1948 (v. three up to then), mining has climbed even faster. Seven years ago the U.S. had 15 small mines with a total of 50 employees; now it has more than 800 sizable mines with more than 4,000 employees...
...which plans to buy all uranium ore mined until at least 1962, is considering a longer-range government buying program "to cover a period between the defense market and a commercial market of reasonable size." Even low-grade ore may turn out to be profitable, said Johnson, because "these deposits may be called upon to supply the nuclear fuel for future industrial power...
...uranium bonanzas have been found in India yet, but there is plenty of low-grade ore that can be mined economically by cheap hand labor. Probably more important are India's thorium deposits, the richest in the world. Thorium cannot be used directly as nuclear fuel. It must be turned into uranium 233 in a reactor, just as uranium 238 is turned into plutonium. Dr. Bhabha thinks that this conversion may be standard practice a few years from now. Uranium 233 derived from thorium is in many important respects the most desirable of all the nuclear fuels...
...Near Spur, Texas, the four sons of Mrs. T. E. McArthur dug up 30 tons of sandstone outcropping on their mother's ranch, shipped them to Anaconda Copper's uranium mill at Bluewater, N.Mex., and got the report that they had found Texas' first commercial ore. The McArthur boys, busily shoveling up more ore, reported last week: "The deeper we go, the hotter it gets . . . This shipment is going to average out at 2%," i.e., ten times minimum commercial grade...