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
Uranium nitride and, in particular, it undergoes an (n,p) reaction which produces significant amounts of radioactive C which would need to be carefully contained and sequestered during reprocessing or permanent storage. Each uranium dinitride complex is considered to have three distinct compounds present simultaneously because of decomposing of uranium dinitride (UN) into uranium sesquinitride (UN), and the uranium mononitride (UN). Uranium dinitrides decompose to uranium mononitride by the following sequence of reactions: Decomposition of UN is the most common method for isolating uranium sesquinitride (UN). Uranium mononitride is being considered as a potential fuel for generation IV reactors such as the Hyperion