Uranium mining in Colorado the Slick Rock, Gypsum Valley, Uravan, and Gateway mining districts. Uranium mining in southwest Colorado goes back to 1898, when a miner dug ten tons of yellow ore that tested high in uranium and vanadium out of a deposit at Roc Creek in Montrose County, Colorado, and shipped it to France, where M. M. C. Friedel and E. Cumenge identified the new mineral that they named carnotite. The mineral was mined for its vanadium, with uranium as a byproduct. Although radium had been discovered in 1898, it had been derived from pitchblende, and the radium content of carnotite was not
Uranium ore uranium content) in the Czech Republic. Also they are closely related to the granites, the mineralization is much younger with a time gap between granite formation and mineralisation of 20 million years. The initial uranium mineralisation consists of quartz, carbonate, fluorite and pitchblende. Remobilsation of uranium occurred at later stages producing polymetal veins containing silver, cobalt, nickel, arsenic and other elements. Large deposits of this type can contain more than 1,000 individual mineralized veins. However, only 5 to 12% of the vein areas carry mineralization and although massive lenses of pitchblende can occur, the overall ore grade is only about