The weekly Alaska citizen., 1917-11-12


 the most promising cure fog certain types of cancer. and m many cas,s where surgical operations are no, practicable 1t is thought to be the only cure for this terrible disease But the serious barrier in demon strating this has been the scarcity of Tldlum. As late as 1913. when the cooperative work with the Ra- dium Institute was begun. there were probably not more than 30 grams (about one ounce) of radium avail. able in the entire world Of th.s amount not more than grams were in the United States not much more than a man could spread on his thumb nail In 1912 al least 75 per cent of the radium produced was extracted from ores mined in the United States. but shipped from our shores as crude ores and returned to Us at $12O,0OO to S16O,OOO gram This was obviously bad national eco. monies IL was like man coming into your back yard and saying "You won't mind if l carry off some of these weeds that see around here? They aren't much good. and notice that you aren't using them and need a certain drug, and hc sells it to you at the rate of $300O.- 900 an ounce, but made from you own despised and misunderstood weeds, The American hospitals were vainly endeavoring to buy back for their own use a part of the radium, but the European national governments, wellendowed national radium institutes, municipalities Gas in Germany, radium banks, hospit- als. and specula tive agencies. were all conspiring to retain it in Flu rope Meanwhile the United States had been giving away the most eX- tensive radium bearing deposits known to the world-a veritable. pot latch.
 Nearly all the radium-bearing ores mined in this country before 1914 were sent to Europe and there treat d by secret processes, No detailed information concerning these pro cesses was available, so the Bureau was forced to develop process of it's own. Owing to a lack of funds with which to carry on the work alone, the Bureau made a co-opera- tive agreement with the National Radium Institute for the purpose Of studying the best methods of hand ling carnotte or and of producing therefrom radium, uranium and va nadium. The Institute obtained leases 
 on 10 claims in the Paradox Valley district of Southwestern Colorado and erected a radium- extraction plant in Denver. The work was undertak- en with special reference to saving the extensive wastes of the ore, and also more particularly that less of this extremely valuable mineral be exported, but rather be retained in this country for the development here of a radium industry and the supply of radium to our own hos pitals.
 Chemists and engineers of the Bu reau have demonstrated that pro cess they have devised for the eX traction of radium from its ores can be successfully used on a large scale and will prove more efficient than that used by the largest foreign producers of radium. Through this process the cost of producing radi um has been reduced to less than one-third of the selling price asked by these concerns. and the process has been patented and dedicated to the public. Approximately 10 grams of radum at a value of over a mil lion dollars have been produced by the Bureau engineers and chemists
 To understand the story of radium one must make himself familiar with the friends and relatives of Radium and get a notion of the family con nections. Radium, the element, is intimately and tenaciously hidden in and associated with another rare metal uranium, though very much as a minority member, the ratio be- ing l part of radium to 3,000,000 parts of metallic uranium. The par ent metal, uranium, occurs in numer ous more or less complicated forms in a score or more little-known and not very abundant minerals, chief of which are pitchblende and carno tite. Pitchblende contains uranium