Research help for Pulp Adventure

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Uranium glass is fluorescent under UV light. Is that what you're thinking of?

That must be it.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

One I just got was Spies in the Congo by Susan Williams about German and Allied spies intriguing to control uranium. I just started the book so I don't know how much it serves your purpose.

Apparently there was a thriving uranium mine in the region.

Apparently yes! It's the Shinkolobwe mine, in 1939 it was the first uranium-producing site in the world. The famous German catch of yellow cake at the Belgian refinery of Olen is the starting point of most if not all fiction concerning the Nazi atomic project. The mineral (pitchblende) from Shinkolobwe was especially high-grade as its content of uranium, better than that from the Canadian source.

Shinkolobwe itself might be a pulpy location. Owned by the Union Minière du Haut Katanga or UMHK (the name in itself has a worrisome ring, or is it just me?), apparently it was run with substandard working conditions. A long hiatus in production is said to have taken place because of flooding - even though much of the production took place as an open-air dig. The company negotiated hard bargains to resume supplies, demanding significant payments and subsidies from the Belgian government in exile, and, ultimately, from the US government. The location underwent Soviet-like security measures, disappearing from the maps and growing a curtain of US-led security. The final checkpoint was the town itself of Jadotville, the closest to the mine, and a name that resurfaces in later wars. The village of Shinkolobwe was entirely a company town, no strangers admitted.
A pulp adventure could easily draw on classic heart-of-darkness undertones when describing this place.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

One I just got was Spies in the Congo by Susan Williams about German and Allied spies intriguing to control uranium. I just started the book so I don't know how much it serves your purpose.

Apparently there was a thriving uranium mine in the region. According to the wiki U was used for photography, and as a glaze for glasswork, ceramic, and even dinnerware, the last of which sounds utterly insane in retrospect(nowadays when they use it for shot rounds they know enough to deplete it, then the whole point was that it glowed).

I am not sure if using depleted uranium is so much because it is depleted as because there is a lot of it around dirt cheap because you produce almost 200 pounds of it as a byproduct of making 1 pound of weapons grade uranium, or around 10-180 for reactor fuel grade uranium.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

I am not sure if using depleted uranium is so much because it is depleted as because there is a lot of it around dirt cheap because you produce almost 200 pounds of it as a byproduct of making 1 pound of weapons grade uranium, or around 10-180 for reactor fuel grade uranium.

In the fifties, before they knew what they were handling some people fiddled with tactical use of full-blown nukes. It's obvious they didn't do so for budget problems then.

The main reason depleted U is used is that it is a very heavy rock and hence useful for a kenetic round.