Uranium-series disequilibria as a means to study recent migration of uranium in a sandstone-hosted uranium deposit, NW China.

Uranium concentration and alpha specific activities of uranium decay series nuclides (234)U, (238)U, (230)Th, (232)Th and (226)Ra were measured for 16 oxidized host sandstone samples, 36 oxic-anoxic (mineralized) sandstone samples and three unaltered primary sandstone samples collected from the Shihongtan deposit. The results show that most of the ores and host sandstones have close to secular equilibrium alpha activity ratios for (234)U/(238)U, (230)Th/(238)U, (230)Th/(234)U and (226)Ra/(230)Th, indicating that intensive groundwater-rock/ore interaction and uranium migration have not taken place in the deposit during the last 1.0 Ma.

Biosorption of uranium by lake-harvested biomass from a cyanobacterium bloom.

The aim of this work was to study some basic aspects of uranium biosorption by powdered biomass of lake-harvested cyanobacterium water-bloom, which consisted predominantly of Microcystis aeruginosa. The optimum pH for uranium biosorption was between 4.0 and 8.