Chemistry of nuclear resources, technology, and waste Page: 3 of 72
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for predicting the possible migration of these nuclides in the environment
and more importantly how to better prevent such possible migration. Also,
studies are underway to understand the bonding of metallic oxides in glasses
in a program designed to select the best materials for immobilizing the fis-
sion product and actinide wastes for disposal in geological or other sites.
Uranium Exploration. The typical approach to exploration for deep
uranium deposits is to drill wells and log them with y ray detection devices.
This method not only is cumbersome but also rather restrictive in terms of
the distance away from the well the uranium deposit might lie and still be
detected. In May of 1977, R. V. Gentry of Columbia-Union College had the
idea that daughters of 238U could be used and detected in a new approach to
the discovery of more remote uranium deposits that in practice may be in-
accessible to present methods. The key to Gentry's idea is to use oil and
gas fields as collectors of uranium daughter products and then to detect
these daughters in the fluids that are brought to the surface in the ordinary
course of business by the oil and gas industry. This idea has now been worked
out in sufficient detail by Gentry, in cooperation with Iran Thomas and Richard
Hahn of Oak Ridge, that the Laboratory filed a patent application for it in
August of this year on behalf of the United States Government (1).
In Figure 1 we see all of the daughters of 238U along with their modes
of decay and their half-lives. The isotopes most useful as vectors for dis-
covering uranium deposits in petrofluids appear to be the highly mobil noble
gas 222Rn, an alpha emitter with a 3.8 day half-life, a daughter of 222Rn,
214Bi, which has a very penetrating 2.4 MeV y ray for easy detection, 210Pb
with its daughter 210Bi, and the 138 day a emitter, 210P
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Keller, O.L. Jr. Chemistry of nuclear resources, technology, and waste, article, January 1, 1978; Tennessee. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1212658/m1/3/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.