Conway granite Conway granite Conway granite is a typically pink mineral-rich igneous (or mesoperthitic) biotite granite. It is amphibole-free and of coarse particle size (with portions of the rock fine-grained or porphyritic). Conway granite has a relatively high concentration of thorium, at about 56 (±6) PPM; this amount is not enough to make the granite dangerously radioactive, but it is sufficient to make the rock a low-grade (almost certainly not economic, at least in the early years) source of thorium for a thorium fuel cycle. Geologist Edward Hitchcock named the granite in 1877 after the town of Conway, New Hampshire, which is
Granite dome on erosional offloading or pressure release. There is evidence that supports this hypothesis when looking at granitic landforms that have sheet fractures. Granite forms deep in the Earth’s crust under conditions of high ambient or lithostatic pressure. In order for the granite to be exposed at the Earth’s surface a considerable thickness of rock must be eroded. This unloading allows the granite to expand radially and sheet fractures form tangentially to the radial stress. This indicates that the shape of the pre-existing land surface determines the geometry of the sheet fractures. One hypothesis is that granite domes are uplifted blocks.