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Identity HelpKingswood adit uraninite

7th Nov 2009 22:36 UTCVirginia Maine Expert

I am now officially confused.

The photos of the 'pitchblende' I believed I had collected from this site have now been renamed 'sooty uraninite'. OK that I can understand but the mineral chemistry is given as Y2O3, so where does the yttrium get in on the act?

And just to make things trickier I picked up another piece there the other day. The crystals are roughly cubic less than 1mm and glassy green, to make it trickier it looks like most of them have a coating of something else and I've no idea any more.

2 photos attached sorry about the poor quality but any suggestions would be welcome.

7th Nov 2009 22:52 UTCRob Woodside 🌟 Manager

Which site??? Neither pitchblende nor sooty Uraninite are names of mineral species, both are just Uraninite. Your photos look like torbernite, but could be nice xls of many uranium secondaries

Edit: Sorry I missed the Kingswood. Pitchblend is merely massive, possibly impure, Uraninite while sooty Uraninite refers to the kind of deposition that formed the pitchblende. Presumably it rubs off like soot. All sooty Uraninite is pitchblende and all pitchblende is Uraninite. You can have pitchblendes and Uraninites that are not sooty Uraninite and Uraninites that are not pitchblendes. If what's in your photos came from Kingswood then you have a mineral that we don't have listed from there. It would be good to find out just what it is and list it.

7th Nov 2009 23:12 UTCPavel Kartashov Manager

Hi Chris,

your crystals are more similar to pharmacosiderite group mineral rather to some uranoan mica. Arsenates should be abundant on the locality. Also they may be usual green fluorite cubes.

I don't see any mentions of Y₂O₃ on the page http://www.mindat.org/min-39272.html, which is now under construction yet.

Kind regards,

Pavel

7th Nov 2009 23:34 UTCVirginia Maine Expert

OK,

Go to Kingswood Mine, Buckfastleigh. mindat kingswood mineral photo page

Click mineral photos and you get 4 photos and alongside the headings it has Y2O3 (??) Y and U are next to each other on the keyboard, I just know it needs changing to U2O3.

Hard to make the identification the crystals are all pretty battered, I got it out of the dump, and the whole piece is hot as hell so I can't tell if they are radioactive and I'm not enjoying being too close to it either.

It's not fluorite I can say that much

7th Nov 2009 23:44 UTCRob Woodside 🌟 Manager

Now I'm puzzled. I can't see where the Y came from or how to change it. Further I remember pitch blende as U₃O₈ and because of the usual impurities I think it is misleading to give the Uraninite ideal formula for pitchblende.

I'm moving this topic to Mistakes and Errors and we can move it back to the identity board to try to sort out your unknown

8th Nov 2009 00:54 UTCPavel Kartashov Manager

Dear Chris,

"hot as hell" are too strong words in this case. :D Try to check 1 cm grain of Zircon or 5 mm grain of Euxenite with your counter and you'll obtain your 1000 cps. It isn't serious RA level, of course if you hadn't find it in a soup pan on your kitchen.

Not longer before as yesterday we had bet, how much "give" ~2 kg bag of real U ore with pitchblende (not massive pitchblende, but mm thick its veinlets into rhiolite). I bet for 15-18 mR/h and failed. The damned bag gave 45 mR/h from 15 cm distance. I am afraid, that your counter will become mad or melt during such experiment - this RA level is equal to some hundreds of billions of cps. This I name "a hot". >:D< But word "hell" I am use only in connection with synthetic radionuclides and wouldn't even listen about them.

I have some ideas from where this Y₂O₃ had arise, but don't see any way to improve situation. :(

8th Nov 2009 14:36 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

Looks like the database record was reused and some info didn't get cleared out. Fixed record. Thanks for the report.

8th Nov 2009 20:30 UTCRob Woodside 🌟 Manager

Thanks, David. OK back to the identity board to try to identfy your green xls.

8th Nov 2009 22:11 UTCRonald John Gyllenhammer Expert

Zeunerite - Metazeunerite??

9th Nov 2009 00:27 UTCPavel Kartashov Manager

It isn't uranoan mica at all. And faster of all it isn't U or U-bearing mineral.

9th Nov 2009 00:46 UTCRonald John Gyllenhammer Expert

Probably impossible to seperate these to test for radioactivity. Pavel is probably right about Pharmacosiderite group minerals anyway.

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