Kipawa Thorite

Thanks Pavel! I think I have a few others you may like. Let me see what I can dig up.

[www.mindat.org]

Here's some from Reiner's trip this summer. I just uploaded them this morning, so the child photos may be a while appearing.

Nice, that's a great little combination piece!

Hello Everyone.

Thanks to Laslo's suggestion of Thornasite there has appeared a new twist. I thought I would try to determine if the samples where opal or Thornasite by placing a piece in HCl. Opal is insoluble in HCl but I thought Thornasite might be soluble with release of silica gel much like many of the other silicates at Kipawa. Much to my surprise it turns out that it is neither! The sample began to bubble and dissolve leaving behind a hard white porous mass that did not fluoresce nor was it radioactive. However the acid was radioactive indicating that the thorium and/ or uranium where leached from the sample.
The only uranium carbonate that I know of that fluoresces green under LW & SW is Liebigite but I know of no Thorium carbonates that fluoresce. Any suggestions to what the mineral that dissolved might be?

What about calcite + thorite ? or calcite + opal pseudomorph thorite as you said.
Calcite take thorium element when you put it on hcl, and your porous mass is silica from "opal"