Sciencemadness Discussion Board

U and Th

ChemistryForever - 16-3-2019 at 12:32

Is there any european source for uranium and thorium ( metallic or compounds, does not matter ) than onyxmet ?

urenthesage - 28-3-2019 at 09:18

How much do you need? If its just for an element sample I could probably oblige. And its raw urananite for the uranium, so its technically a mineral sample so it should be legal to mail. For Thorium, go to ebay, look for dirt cheap thoriated welding rods, get a bunch, and put them in strong peroxide. The thoria (ThO2) will sink as a whiteish blue powder. You also get a pile of tungsten oxide left in solution which you can get by evapourating the liquid portion of whats left. The Thoria isnt really soluble in water so just pour off the yellow liquid for your tungsten.

Ubya - 28-3-2019 at 12:43

I was able to buy 5g of uranyl acetate from a Polish ebay seller, you need to keep your eyes open, every now and then something appears in the listings

Deathunter88 - 28-3-2019 at 18:35

Autunite is in my opinion a much better option than uraninite for uranium compound extraction, and is readily available on Ebay for mineral collections. It contains around 40% uranium by mass. See my video on its extraction if you want a step by step tutorial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NmY-emT7R0

Thorium can be easily extracted from thoriated tungsten welding rods containing 2% by mass thorium oxide, which can be dissolved using hydrogen peroxide leaving the oxide as a grey powder.

phlogiston - 29-3-2019 at 03:28

Nice video, thanks for sharing.

If you also want to isolate radium from the same sample the pitchblende might be preferable, because autunite contains calcium, which will be difficult to separate from Ra.

Ubya - 29-3-2019 at 03:35

Quote: Originally posted by phlogiston  
Nice video, thanks for sharing.

If you also want to isolate radium from the same sample the pitchblende might be preferable, because autunite contains calcium, which will be difficult to separate from Ra.

at only a few grams of radium per ton of pitchblende i see it a hard task

phlogiston - 29-3-2019 at 03:52

For many element collectors, a few micrograms suffice. Just enough Ra-containing barium to be detectable makes a nice sample.