Uranium mining Cornwall. The first deliberate mining of radioactive ores took place in Jáchymov, a silver-mining city in the Czech Republic. Marie Curie used pitchblende ore from Jáchymov to isolate the element radium, a decay product of uranium. Until World War II uranium was mined primarily for its radium content; some carnotite deposits were mined primarily for the vanadium content. Sources for radium, contained in the uranium ore, were sought for use as luminous paint for watch dials and other instruments, as well as for health-related applications, some of which in retrospect were certainly harmful. The byproduct uranium was used mostly as
Bioremediation of radioactive waste acids and siderophores that allow the dissolution and mobilization of radionuclides through the soil. It seems that siderophores on bacterial surface could also facilitate the entry of these elements within the cell as well. "Pseudomonas aeruginosa" also secretes chelating agents out that meet uranium and thorium when grown in a medium with these elements. In general, it has also been found that enterobactin siderophores are extremely effective in solubilizing actinide oxides of plutonium. Citrate is a chelator which binds to certain transition metals and radioactive actinides. Stable complexes such as bidentate, tridentate (ligands with more than one atom bound) and