Weekend rad hunt

[Richard Hull]

I am not a major collector of minerals, but the oportunity to collect a few radioactives is not to be snubbed.

Our HEAS meeting was held this last weekend over at Tim Raney's house with a side trip to one of the famous Amelia county mines just outside Richmond. It seems that Virginia's Peidmont region is a thorium rich area and virtually devoid of uranics. Our state's Uranics are in the west near the Blue Ridge and Appalachian chain of mountains (called the Shennandoah Valley)

Each one of our group had their own interests, but mine and Tim's tended this day toward hot rocks.

The now long defunct mine in Amelia county is on a working cattle farm. The owner, seeing a buck, uses a large backhoe to regularly scoop rocky material from the mine and pile it ever higher on his land in a rich tailings pile for rock hounds to roll over for $10.00 a head. Among the common product is Mica....Tons of the crap. Quartz, Beryl, microlites and monozite crystals are among the better items to be found regularly.

After searching for about 2 hours on the pile and watching most everyone there with a geiger counter find a nice microlite of monozite crystal, I got tired of the effort and was told by one of the regulars to go down to the stream and pan out the monazite sands. It sounded good and so Tim and I headed down to the stream, gold pan and counters in hand. We were nearly tramppled by thundering hoofs while crossing open pasture (th' moolies thought we had food). We had to slither on our bellies like reptiles under highly charged electrical fences to reach the stream.

Both Tim and I were stunned beyond belief that the air in the depression of the stream was highly radioactive (thoron). We registered about 300 CPM at head level. (Normal is about 25cpm.)

Panning is an acquired skill. After farting with the effort for about 15 minutes I started panning down to a small 1-2 ounce mass of monozite sand which really set the counter ticking. After about 1.5 hours of this and sifting through about 200lbs of stream bed sand, I had about 4 pounds of monozite rich product.

Upon returning home I ran it through the MCA and there was the typical gamma peaks associated with thorium.

All in all, quite an adventure with the biggest hazards being the possible death by stampede or electrocution. The greatest risk on the rock pile was loosing your balance and falling or twisting an ankle. The radiation hazards weren't even on the radar.

Richard Hull

[Carl Willis]

Sounds like a cool trip, Richard!

I spend a fair bit of time rockhounding, my efforts principally focused on obtaining radioactives. Enthusiasm for these materials is generally NOT observed among my rockhounding friends, so it can be hard to get company on collecting trips if they think it's going to be strictly a "nuke" trip.

Personally I have never looked for monazite, although I have some of the sand that somebody else panned out of a creek near Falls Lake. I think (and don't know for sure) that the monazite is the black constituent in this sand.

My favorite places are all in the western part of NC, specifically Spruce Pine. The Spruce Pine area is loaded with uranium. If anyone is interested in directions to the Deer Park mine up in Spruce Pine, I have found some nice uraninite crystals there and it is on abandoned land. Other stuff to be found includes torbernite (commonly peppered throughout biotite mica and on cleavage planes in the feldspar) and uranophane (often depositing in fractures in the granite).

Out on the coastal plain, we have massive phosphate deposits in the Pungo River formation. It's been previously mentioned that phosphate rock tends to be hot. I have found some nodules that read more than 10 times background. Certainly they are not as impressive as uraninite but are much more common. My mother has a large fossil whale vertebra from the Aurora phosphate mine, which she used to keep on her desk...but I think her esteem of that bone dropped after watching it peg out the low setting on my geiger counter!

Lots of good natural hot stuff out there.

[ChrisSmolinski]

A very interesting article Richard, it brought back memories, I visited the Amelia County mine several (eight?) years ago, before I was into all things radioactive As I recall I found out about the mine from the owner of the rock shop out on Midlothian Hwy a few miles west of Richmond. Anyway, all I remember was finding some garnets after several hours of panning in the sluce, I think I still have them packed away somewhere.

Two or three years ago I visited Ruggles Mine up in NH. I was unable to find any radioactive minerals there, other than the ones in the display case in their shop Parts of the mine were flooded though, so perhaps I missed the hot areas.

I keep meaning to visit the site located in Jim Thorpe PA that is supposed to have some good finds, just off the road.
Are the coastal areas of NC known to have any thorium monozite deposits? We go to the Outer Banks each summer, and though it might look odd, I could see myself sitting on the beach doing a little panning

[Richard Hull]

I'll speak to both posts above.

The monazite sand in Amelia has vast amounts of magnetite in it and they are all black grains, easily separated out of the sand with a neodymium-iron-boron magnet. The stuff is about 20% magnetite! This black material is NOT radioactive. According to our group's rockhound, the monazite is the red amber or orange sand grains.

Both Virginia and North Carolina piedmont regions are among the righest thorium (monazite) areas in the US.

Packards rock shop is the one you refer to as the rock shop just west of Richmond. It is in Midlothian Va and Dave Packard, somewhat of a local legend, can supply details and minerals there.

I make about one or two trips each year to Leicester NC as part of my duties as a director of Electric Spacecraft. This is just outside of Ashville. There is a neat rock shop in Ashville called the Silver Armadillo. I wish I knew where to collect uranics in that area.

Richard Hull

P.S. for the great unwashed masses, Monazite is most commonly considered to a be an admixture of rare earth and thorium posphates. Virtually all the world's supply of rare earth metals come from monazite sands and ores. China is the world's leading supplier of marketable, reduced rare earth oxides and metals.