"Uranium City is a northern settlement in northern Saskatchewan, Canada." Ever hear of it? I did not, until today, waiting while my wife had a consultation about here cataract surgery. The book I was lookin over was a compilation of unusual and strange places and things worldwide. There is NO established vehicular road to Uranium City! Frank " In 1954 the local newspaper, The Uranium Times, noted that 52 mines were operating and 12 open-pit mines were next to Beaverlodge Lake.[3] Initially, most of the residences in Uranium City were simply tents. " "Uranium City was a thriving community until 1982, with its population approaching the 5,000 threshold required to achieve city status in the province. The closure of the mines on 30 June 1982 led to economic collapse, with most residents of the community leaving. It was later designated as a northern settlement with about 300 people remaining. The local hospital closed in the spring of 2003. The current population is 73,[2] including a number of Métis and First Nations people." See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_City Main Street on a foggy day
An interesting article and a couple of video puff pieces about the Gunnar Mines. http://uraniumcity-history.com/true/
The Radium Girls "After WWI, the U.S. military gave a contract to U.S. Radium Corp. to produce wrist watches, with glowing hands, for soldiers. These new watches soon became all the rage among the general public as well. With the boom, many young women (4,000 in total employed by U.S. Radium alone from 1917-1926) were hired by various factories to paint the watch dials with special radium-laced paint. It was good paying work for the day for young women who, on account of their small hands, were seen as perfectly suited to do the work. The girls earned 1.5 cents per dial painted (about 22 cents today)."
@Nancy Hart The Radium Girls became the subject of extremely intense scrutiny as litigation took hold resulting from their radium-induced health issues. "In her new book, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, Kate Moore tells the story of young women who were drawn to glamorous work with radium in the 1910s and 20s, only to have their lives taken — painfully, horrendously, and very early — by the lethal substance." Story here: https://timeline.com/radium-girls-kate-moore-2bc5746f9a6b Frank
Uranium U-238 is the heaviest naturally-occurring element in the Periodic Table. The heavy elements are the most prone to disentegrate, in the form of spontaneously emitting alpha particles and gamma rays. The rare Uranium isotope U-235 is unique in that its atom readily gives up neutrons when bombarded, which split nearby U-235 atoms, releasing energy and triggering a chain- reaction, resulting in a Nuclear Explosion. The nuclear energy released is ten million times as great as a chemical explosion. The Hiroshima bomb "Little Boy" fissioned only 1.5 % of the 140 pounds of U-235, but it caused an explosion equal to 15,000 tons of TNT. (Frank already knows all this.) (The red parts are the U-235 rings) Hal