K-65 residues are the very

radioactive Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is conside ...

mill residues resulting from the uniquely concentrated

uranium Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...

ore Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically including metals, concentrated above background levels, and that is economically viable to mine and process. The grade of ore refers to the concentration ...

discovered before WW II in

Katanga province Katanga was one of the four large provinces created in the Belgian Congo in 1914. It was one of the eleven provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1966 and 2015, when it was split into the Tanganyika Province, Tanganyika, Hau ...

(

Shinkolobwe Shinkolobwe, or Kasolo, or Chinkolobew, or Shainkolobwe, was a radium and uranium mine in the Haut-Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), located west of Likasi (formerly Jadotville), south of Kambove, and about northwe ...

mine) of the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...

(formerly

Belgian Congo The Belgian Congo (, ; ) was a Belgian colonial empire, Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960 and became the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville). The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Repu ...

). According to Zoellner, "Remnants from typical uranium from the southwestern United States give a radioactive signature of about forty picocuries per gram, about ten times the amount of picocuries per liter of air that is considered safe for humans to breathe. The Shinkolobwe remnants, by contrast, emit a stunning 520,000 picocuries per gram." The Linde Air Products Company and Electro Metallurgical plant near Niagara Falls built the ring-and-plug in

Little Boy Little Boy was a type of atomic bomb created by the Manhattan Project during World War II. The name is also often used to describe the specific bomb (L-11) used in the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress ...

. Linde Air used the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works site at the end of the war to dispose of its atomic waste, cuttings from the African uranium, some 200 dump trucks' worth. The eventual location of all this waste is called the "Interim Waste Containment Structure" of the Niagara Falls Storage Site of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This ore, dubbed "K-65", had a record 65% uranium content. It also held very high concentrations of

thorium Thorium is a chemical element; it has symbol Th and atomic number 90. Thorium is a weakly radioactive light silver metal which tarnishes olive grey when it is exposed to air, forming thorium dioxide; it is moderately soft, malleable, and ha ...

and

radium Radium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in alkaline earth metal, group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, ...

(and their decay products, including

radon Radon is a chemical element; it has symbol Rn and atomic number 86. It is a radioactive noble gas and is colorless and odorless. Of the three naturally occurring radon isotopes, only Rn has a sufficiently long half-life (3.825 days) for it to b ...

gas) which are retained in the tailings (residues). The very high concentrations of these extremely toxic, long-lived

radionuclide A radionuclide (radioactive nuclide, radioisotope or radioactive isotope) is a nuclide that has excess numbers of either neutrons or protons, giving it excess nuclear energy, and making it unstable. This excess energy can be used in one of three ...

s present in these wastes prompted the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

' National Research Council to categorize them as indistinguishable in hazard from High-Level Waste in its 1995 report, "Safety of the High-Level Uranium Ore Residues at the Niagara Falls Storage Site, Lewiston, New York

The K-65 ores were refined as a key part of the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

at the Linde Ceramics Plant at Tonawanda, NY, and at the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in St. Louis, MO; these ores were the primary raw material source of ~80% of the uranium used in the Hiroshima bomb. The Mallinckrodt "K-65 residues" were later moved to the Feed Materials Production Center, a

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

era uranium refinery at Fernald, OH (outside of

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...

) which commenced operations in 1951. The refining of "K-65" ore was continued at Fernald. The Linde "K-65 residues" were transported to a storage silo built at the federally appropriated Lake Ontario Ordnance Works site outside of Lewiston, NY, a short distance from Niagara Falls, NY.

References

* Nuclear materials Uranium {{nuclear-tech-stub