Word: prospector
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Geologists, newsmen and stockbrokers were beating a path last week to the tent flaps of a prospector named Robert Campbell, on the chilly shore of Lake Superior. Seventy miles north of Sault Ste. Marie, he had just staked out Canada's newest uranium discovery. Even cautious officials in Canada's Department of Mines thought that his samples looked like "very high-quality...
Campbell stayed quiet long enough to stake 30 claims. Another prospector, Norbert Miller of Toronto, saw him staking, guessed what was up. As the word spread along what prospectors call "the moccasin trail," the rush started. In no time 500 claims had been staked around Campbell's. When Campbell's ore samples showed a 60% content of radioactive mineral and 99% of it uranium (10% is considered pay dirt), the boom went skyhigh...
...year-old prospector named Ernest Johnson started it all. In two years of experience with radioactive ores around the Eldorado mine on Great Bear Lake, he had noticed that where there was uranium there were also cobalt and nickel. Figuring that the converse should be true, he packed a Geiger counter and pushed up the Roxey Creek valley, 120 miles north of Vancouver, where fallen rock bearing cobalt "bloom" lay in the creek...
Last week, for the first time since 1943, such Geiger-counter hunting for uranium was opened to any prospector. In the House of Commons, Trade and Commerce Minister Clarence D. Howe announced the end of the ban on private uranium mining,*promised prospectors $2.75 a pound for ores with a minimum of 10% uranium oxide. Said Howe: the government is seeking "discovery of important deposits. At the moment we know of only one. We think there are others...
...Prospectors who discover uranium will be caught immediately in the government's atomic blackout. Finds may be reported only to Canada's Atomic Energy Control Board or the Mines and Resources Department. While the government will permit a prospector to stake and exploit his claim, he may not disclose its location or existence. Maximum penalty for violation: a $10,000 fine and five years' imprisonment...