Show HUNT FOR URANIUM PROMISES PROMISES PROMISES' TO DWARF I TIME OLD GOLD RUSHES IN IMPORTANCE I Cordon Gordon G. G Gauss a u press service writer salter recently toured the uranium country to gather Information on the uranium industry In this section of oi the Colorado Plateau lie He wrote a series of articles telling what he saw of which ts tl the follow follow- ing jug is tho the first 1 An atomic inspired atomic Inspired boom Is sweeping the vast vat cut canyon desert of the Four Corners country i The setting Is one of snowcapped snow snow-I capped mountains searing scaring sun and blowing sand There are prehistoric Indian ruins and dinosaur bones Helicopters Geiger counters and gamma ray machines play playa a part i At stake Is the ability of the I United States to produce the stuff which goes into atom bombs and which Someday may power an age of easier living I In n Importance the boom pro promises to dwarf the gold rushes of the last lat century but the number num ber of persons Involved Is small com compared ared to the bonanza stam stam- cedes of other days There probably pro bably arent aren't many more than a ai thousand men actually digging I The goal Is discovery and pr of more uranium the radioactive element which makes makes atomic fission possible The boom Is s government It has been building up since 1948 1943 when the Atomic Energy Commission decided to late domestic uranium production production tion to relieve dependence on Imports The government promised pro pro- to buy all the ore are It set setup setup up Incentive payments and put ABC and U U. S. S Geological Survey Sur vey scientists to work hunting ore deposits The Incentives sent a strange I group Into the of deso late mesas There were cow boys cattlemen Indians sheepherders sheep sheep- herders herder engineers and The hunt centered from the start in the wild almost un known Colorado Pl Plateau region which lies only partly In Colorado Colo Colo- rado redo and is a plateau only In the broadest definition of the term There have been reports of finds in other areas but the most Intense hunt is along the south miles of the Utah Utah- Colorado border and In the In In- dIan dlan country of northeast Arizona Ari Arl zona and northwest New Mex Mex- ico It is in this region where actual production centers Grand Junction a long long long-es es city of some located located lo lo- miles west of Denver Is the capital of the uranium country The Atomic Energy Commission has regional offices here So do most of the larger mining companies and allied industries such as equipment firms and truckers The new boom deals solely with the basic ingredient of the atom bomb The bear bear ing ore Is refined at eight scat scat- mills to uranium oxide Then It is shipped to the at Grand Junction Where It goes oes from then is a defense secret Men and a few women endure en dure incredible hardships and loneliness ss sg to dig the ore bre Some live e In crude rude one room one room shacks A few were In tents Some haul halll I their drinking water 80 miles mites Some drill in mine tunnels so low Iowa a man cannot stand erect Most of the mines are small and only a few feet from the surface Some are ate strip opera There isn't a railroad In the area between Grand Junction on the north and Gallup NM NJ on the south south about about miles or mlles or from Montrose Colo on the east to west central Utah on the west Except in the few towns sprinkled through the region Ion there Is almost no plumbing I and little electricity There are few telephones I Roads are mostly one track one trade and rutted Jeeps and pickup I trucks with extra gears are the I Usual vehicles I There is little griping about living Jiving conditions though Some of lot the men work for as 11 little We as 1 an hour Others with their own claims or leases reputedly clear something like a year The boom has made a coupie couple cou pie of millionaires but most operators op orators have plowed earnings back Into new equipment Thousands of little red pipes sticking a few Inches above the sand sand caps caps of test holes drilled by the and the show reserves still untouched Low Low flying flying helicopters and the panel trucks of testing crews carry carryon on the governments government's hunt for new ore supplies Resource and production figures fig fig- ures urns of course are locked in secrecy secrecy se se- se crecy because of national ity But they arent aren't needed to show the Industry is expanding Government officials now talk of the uranium area In terms of hundreds of thousands of square miles The has stopped ordinary or or- methods of claiming land for about square miles containing i proven uranium deposits Most of the uranium uranium bearing bearing ore on the Colorado Plateau is usually mixed with the metal vanadium Theres There's another kind of ore too In which copper Is found with uranium Until recently there hasn't been a practical method of separating the two but mining men say the lem has been licked The deposits as a rule are not large They usually are pockets pockets' of a few thousands tons scattered In sandstone formations forma forma- I Hons over a large area Occasional little showings of pitchblende pitchblende far far higher quality ore ore are are found Now and then miners uncover buried burled trees and dinosaur bones which have become be come mineralized with carno carno- Cite and are high grade ore are |