Word: uranium
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...natural element uranium contains only .7% of the isotope U-235. It must be enriched to 90% for use in nuclear warheads, a vastly expensive and complex process. A typical plant using a gaseous diffusion method covers about 90 acres, uses about 400 million gallons of recirculating cooling water per day, requires 1,300 megawatts of continuous electrical power (enough to meet the needs of a city of about 600,000) and costs about $2 billion to build. Only the U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China have such gargantuan processing plants; they thus have been able to exercise...
Four years ago, geologists for Queensland Mines Ltd. came across a tiny plot of ground in Australia's remote northern Nabarlek region that turned out to be the richest uranium deposit in the world. Assuming that mining rights could easily be obtained from the aboriginal owners, the Australian company quickly signed contracts to sell $60 million worth of ore to Japanese firms. What the mining executives failed to take into account was the aborigines' reluctance to disturb the green ants who live near the site...
...higher sums for mining rights. The bids started with a "good-will" tender of $7,425 in 1971; they have since grown to a package including $891,000 in cash plus a 3.75% royalty, totaling $13,619,000. The company is willing to invest so much because the uranium deposit is conservatively valued at $300 million. In a plot only 755 ft. by 33 ft., there are more than 443,000 tons of uranium ore -roughly 1% of the world's known supply. The ore contains 47.4 lbs. of uranium per ton, more than twice the percentage found...
Wyoming already ranks as the nation's leading producer of uranium and soda ash and is the source of more than 12 million bbl. of oil per year. But even greater promise is offered by more than 545 billion tons of coal. At present rates of use, Wyoming could supply the nation's total coal demand for a quarter-century. Much of the coal is low-polluting, low-sulfur sub-bituminous that lies in miles-long, 45-ft.-thick seams only a few feet below the surface...
...figure of high reputation among his colleagues, now disaffected with bomb making and no longer at work as a nuclear physicist. He directs an ecological-research firm. He and McPhee travel about the country. He shows the author unguarded trucks rumbling down rural highways, loaded with weapons-grade uranium. They see manufacturing plants where enough fissionable material to blow up Manhattan could be stolen by one armed and determined man, or carried off bit by bit, undetected, by one unarmed employee...