Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran
Slaves work the uranium mines to keep the Roman Empire alive... until the evil X invent the slightly superscience version of nukes.
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Go with salt mines. You mine salt with higher than usual uranium concentration left over from the drying of the Mediterranean (which has a weird enough history to easily handwave anything you need for that, and a geologically recent one, less than 5.5 million years since the Messianan salinity crisis), found in Calabria, Sicily and Central Tuscany (which appear to be the only substantial exposed Messinian halite deposits which are on land, and quite convenient for the Roman Empire). When kept just moist enough this weird salt boils the water you moisten it with. Nuclear steam engines (with a side effect of radiation poisoining) here we come.
Of course there are also a lot of extra "geothermal" hot springs sites all around the shores of the Mediterranean, fed by water seeping into deep deposits of ancient salt too. You can even use that as the source of the discovery of the effect.