Unreal spectacle in the Uranium Mine. 

10,000 comments about how annoying the Geiger counter was, I want more! Thank you for an amazing video. My 11 year old son and I have been playing with fluorescence of rocks and minerals. It keeps him interested, and he loves showing his friends.

I actually enjoy the sound of the Geiger counter lol. Seeing this video really makes me wanna start collecting fluorescent rocks now ☺️ great filming Dan thanks for taking us along. Also that lazer beam seam you highlighted was probably my favorite part of the video, it looked so cool.

I think the Geiger counter is such a great thing to have to show that it really is radioactive. And to show the hottest spots. Great vid!

What a way to light up Christmas! And it's all natural!

A new wrinkle , Vanadium , associated with a granite pegmatite . I wonder what the beryllium content is ? Beryl plus Vanadium ( and / or Chromium ) = the possibility of Emerald . Vanadium is fairly commonly associated with Uranium and Thorium , although it might have been picked up as an interaction between the Granite body and any Mafic / Ultramafic country rocks . I am also curious to know how much of that brilliant green fluorescence is actually Autunite , and , how much ( if any ) , might be Hyalite from weathering of feldspars ? This is a common feature of many granite pegmatites. Yes , white granites are typically rich in Uranium , and , Radon is a product of Uranium's natural decay chain . Black shales are often also rich in Uranium , and therefore , also Radon . If you ever feel the need to get banned from a home improvement store , bring in a detector and check their granite countertop samples , lol . They should give discernable counts above background , and might start a panic , given the typical ignorance of the public about such things .

Dan, these collab videos you guys are doing are really great for any number of reasons, and I'm glad y'all share so much chemistry (pun intended) with each other cuz the content you all make is great, little pictures from different perspectives. Thanks so much, the UV light at the end w/ the 80s-esque electronica was perfect!

Tres cool! All the hallmarks of a lost episode of Star Trek. Weird vegetation, Martian landscape, high tech scanners, caves of glowing rocks, weird elements we've never heard of, even some tritanium. Just warning, don't step in any Gorn poop.

All of your videos are amazing, I like when you are with Jason and Harry. All of you are very interesting and know your stuff ! Thank you for sharing.

Thats why there have always been miners. Its not just your typical precious metals that are mined. Just about every product you purchase has minerals that were extracted by mining. Great video Dan. Merry Christmas to everyone!

You got my 'subscription many years back. Now it's all just fun.

The sound of the geiger counter is awesome. People just like to complain 😂

Along the obvious applications Uranium also has a bit of forgotten use to colour glass and ceramics. I found a piece of Vaseline glass on and old dump which contains SodiumdiUranate, it glows bright yellow/green unther UV light. The romans already used Uranium as a brown/orange glaze and from the late 19th century up to 1940 Vaseline glass was produced. Nile Red made a youtube on making Uranium glass.

It looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. Really cool!

It's very interesting how the different minerals glow a different color

Cool to see you found vanadium. Stryten Energy in Georgia usa is working to develop Vanadium flow batteries . Once these batteries are perfected I would expect that metals value to spike. Great work Dan

I found this video extremely informative! I always learn something watching your videos but this was a cornucopia of information. Very cool!

im a collecter of different mineral and radioactive specimens. one day id love to actually explore one of these mines

I love the different colours.. i want some glowy rocks now thanks 😊

Welcome to Cali guys....good to have you here, this was a super cool segment....keep rockin the minerals, Dan.

Thank you Dan for making videos that brighten my day. With so much darkness in my life, I enjoy your videos tremendously. Every video makes my day a little better as I slowly die. Thanks again Dan for you are a great part of my day to day life.

Great video Dan I really enjoyed the information on the vanadium which I have some experience with while working in a steel mill, we used the vanadium for alloying the steel mostly when making tool steels.

Your definitely on a list

That cave looks so cool when you shine it with that UV light! I've explored a lot of Uranium mines, but I've never seen one glow like THAT!

Amazing colors especially that blue. That was neat to see. Cool stuff brother.

stunning!

Some things you look for I've never heard of. But I enjoy learning about it with you.

glowing caves with Dan Hurd nice

Like a dark ride at an amusement park but the real deal. Cool!

Reminds of of when you could buy rockhounding sample boards as a kid in the 60's. Piece of cardboard with various bits of crystals and such glued to it. Including a chunk of radioactive ore.

Wow. What a cool place. Tnx for showing

This is so cool, love it!

Dan another great year of videos! I wanted to wish you and yours a Very Merry Christmas!!!

The videos with Jason and harry are so great I love the collab videos

I watch ALL of your channels never stop

Wished I knew you were in my state!! I'm in the north central area in Chico, north of Sacramento, but south of Redding. 😅 A gold community of it's own.. and then some. Beautiful area, lots of agriculture and history. 🤠 Happy Holidays... 🎄☃️🌟🎁❄️

Dan, the secret of white light LED's is that the actual LED is a high efficiency ultraviolet LED and it is surrounded with phosphorescent elements that glow and produce the actual white light you see. Turn it off and you will see the phosphorescent material continue to glow for a short time.

U235 is the isotope used in bombs. It constitutes less than 1% of natural Uranium, is more radioactive, and can sustain a chain reaction. Separating it from its less-active U238 cousin was a *huge* "deal" during the Manhattan project. These days, they use gas centrifuges, but initially, in a secret project at Oak Ridge, they ran massive numbers of "Cal-U-Trons" which were basically mass-spectrometers that were "tuned" to slowly separate the two isotopes. They had dozens and dozens of these machines, and they'd have to cycle the output back on itself many many times to get adequate separation.

Thanks for the. Trip. Great information and education.

FASCINATING!

Relax folks, it U238 non fissile and not U235 fissile grade. Dan might glow in the dark now but he won't explode.

Very cool!

I like the sound of the Geiger counter.

AWESOME! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas Dan to you and the family...

Really cool stuff!!

Very cool. Merry Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas to Harry, Jason and the rest of the gang as well!

Those barrel cactus with the red spines you filmed are amazing, they get really HUGE beautiful flowers that are typically ultra dark red or insanely bright yellow and often upwards of 7 inches across when fully opened. I need to get a new cactus sometime. It'd be funny to grow some San Pedro cactus but I'd be too tempted to use it as more than a plant.. and I think I'll stick to weed for that thank you. (I don't need a 4 hour dose!) Something that fluoresces that same blue is scheelite.. tungsten ore which is commonly found around rare Earth minerals and uranium. (I did research since the last video.. I'm autistic, I can't help it.. I research anything that interests me)

you r very entertaining and make great videos like the video collaborations like the others and your dad keep up the good work my friend

Nice one🎉

Very cool video!

Very educational

I collect uranium glass. I would live to have a piece of rock that glows.

Great video

Merry Christm Dan! From the Gossen subdivision at Gossan Cr.

Very Interesting stuff.

Hmmmm.... you may have just given me an idea. Cheers Dan!

Awesome sir six stars

Great content!

So cool!

👍👍… Merry Christmas everyone and to Dan and his family 🤝🍻🎄🎄🎄

I'm surprised you didnt find any scorpions while flashing the uv light around in the cave or in the desert Dan. Another great productions, seasons Greetings to you and the Family from the YVR.

Though that was you shopping at superstore. Couldn’t recognize you without the hat haha. Noticed the hoody and beard.

Autinite be remembering that ores name? ^_^ Great video, super enjoyed the hosts and the content. Thank you!

Merry X-mas and a happy new year from Zion Il.

Petition to use the phrase "minerals of rare earth". Same meaning because of how English works, less confusion about which adjective goes with what. "Earth" means "ore" in this context, and "rare earth" means the ore has low concentration of the relevant element (is "rare" in its "earth").

Merry Christmas to you and your family!

Time for a new hat Dan. Or is that the new air conditioner setting?

Very useful and informative guys...God Bless You Merry Christmas and happy New year..🇮🇩

I don’t know much about vanadium or geology but on the nuclear engineering side, I can say that one of the two common oxidation states of uranium in ore (and is the oxidation state used in nuclear fuel) is +4 which has a dark green color. +3 is a very pure black. Possible those black deposits are concentrated uranium (concentrated being relative to an engineer with no geology background). Again, no idea about vanadium. Just as likely color is associated with vanadium and not uranium or something else entirely. The other common oxidation state of uranium is +6 and has a yellow color. That’s what gives yellow cake it’s name (a product generated during uranium refining to make fuel or weapons). When an electron jumps from an excited state to its normal position in an orbital, that would be called going from a metastable state to its ground state. During which, it would emit a photon. In the case of the autunite ore, a visible spectrum photon. It might be worth getting an ion chamber or seeing if any local universities that have a nuclear physics department would come out. That’ll tell you exactly what the radiation dose rate is in the mine. Geiger counter just says the radiation present but an ion chamber can quantify the damage the radiation is doing. Although it sounds like someone already has brought an ion chamber out since you had the 24 hours ~ a chest X-ray Not of much interest with the mine being in a desert but rain can make the radiation worse around uranium deposits. The moisture forces radon out of rocks. Radon can also dissolve in water, especially ground water, so it can accumulate in puddles instead of blowing away in the wind or be emitted from wells / springs. Lastly, the pancake probe will be picking up every form of radiation. If you want to get a very rough estimate of the surface concentrations of uranium in a rock, very slowly pan the probe over your rock of interest. Not touching the rock but within an inch (alpha particles have a short mean free path in air [the average distance they’ll travel before disappearing. Probably turning into helium]) of the surface. Take a note of the readings the Geiger counter is reporting. Then cover the probe with a piece of paper, that would probably be sufficient to fully block even the highest energy alpha particles you’d see from uranium ore maybe a couple sheets of paper to be safe. Pan the probe at the exact same distance from the rock and along roughly the same route and note the change in numbers the Geiger is reading. Whatever the difference is how many alpha particles (which loosely translate to uranium decaying per second. It’s probably a factor of 7 high so divide the number by 7 to get a more accurate guess) the rock is giving off. Take that number and divide by 12,444. Whatever number you get at the end is the number of grams of uranium (roughly) at the surface of the rock. If you crush the rock and then spread it into a thin layer and repeat the previous process, you could calculate g/ton from the rock. Disclaimer, this has been mental math so the numbers could be off slightly but it should still give a pretty accurate guesstimate without paying for an assay. Could run an assay and the compare the guesstimate to actual numbers and then be able to adjust the guesstimate accordingly to be more accurate. That also only holds true for uranium ore. If there’s a thorium ore body as well, the number won’t be accurate. Knowing roughly what the ratio of thorium ore to uranium ore would let you adjust the guesstimate to then have it accuracy predict the total concentration of both. The rate the probe was being moved in the video would be way to fast to do this, especially with uranium ore, the Geiger counter will have a high dead time from all the gamma and X rays being emitted. Going slow as a snail gives the most accurate numbers

Merry Christmas from the Netherlands

So, that's where you get the energy (inspiration and radiation) to make your videos. What do you suppose is the half-life of your glowing personality? You have captured a major geological and mining thrill to share. Amazing!

You should link your friends in the description section. I usually can't read them when you put them on screen.

One would be wise to wear a breathing maske in an environment filled with uranium dust.

Merry Christmas to you and your family🎄✨🤶🎅

Leave the Geiger sound on when it ticks louder we know we got the good stuff! Love the video..

I like the Geiger counter sound.

Finally got to view this 'glow in the dark, gieger counter vibrating, cool' uranium mine video, Dan! Awesome to see Harry and Jason there, too. Your GLOTD and explanations are very educational. However, radioactive anything, isn't for me. And now that I know about granite countertops being mildly radioactive, not for me thanks. I guess I feel this way because I know of a couple people who got very ill from exposure to radon and near "minor" nuclear situations. My uncle actually got exposed and didn't live long. But, I love seeing the brilliant colors and learning so much about why they glow different colors. I probably rambled on above, without much sense. I'm exhausted from being up 4 days and 3 nights straight. Please forgive me. Merry, peaceful, joyous, prosperous and love-filled Christmas to everyone! 🎄☃️ I'm sending my usual gift of blessings and hugs from Alabama ❤️

Good morning from Southeast South Dakota

The Relative Biological Effect is a calculation used to determine cellular damage due to exposure to ionizing radiation ☢ The damage factor for waveform radiation is 1, while the damage factor for PARTICULATE radiation (dust) is 10. From an old Radiographer... ☢👊🇨🇦

Dan, I couldn't believe the price of those XRF guns!!!!! Upward of 28K...wow I hope he can find enough good stuff to pay for it, never mind the cost of maintenance...yikes! You couldn't pay me enough to go anywhere near a Uranium mine! Happy New Year, Rik Spector

Your average Pink salt has trace Uranium to! Why it taste so good imo!

One question Dan how do they mine it? The old miners wouldn’t have known what they were walking into. Just magnificent

I've heard of an instance of a natural nuclear reaction occurring but the circumstances behind its occurrence were supposedly astronomical. Not sure where or when it happened but they say it happened...somehow. I'm gonna go look it up now. Edit: It's a natural nuclear reactor in Gabon, Africa.

"Dust is bad" Three hours later.. "It's beautiful!"*drags feet*

Greetings from the BIG SKY. I'd bet there's a bunch of that stuff on Fort Peck .

Would love to see a video on how Pitchblende is mined!

Yes dan hello from Stratford upon Avon uk

Hey Dan have you seen the Rover surface pictures of mars showing gold veins could you imagine

Uranium fever has done and got me down Uranium fever, it's spreadin' all around With a Geiger counter in my hand

Some geiger counters have a more pleasing sound. The lower pitched ones are less annoying. This one is particularly high pitched, so i can see why people might have complained. The handheld GQ geigers have a decent click sound.

At some point you need to get Cody's Lab involved in some of the chemistry end of it all. damn smart kid.

Merry Christmas!

Dan, Pronunciation lesson of the day...its nuc lear!!!!!!!

My day loved this kind of stuff. Must be why he named me ytterbrium Bremsstrahlung

Live nysic with glowing rocks. Learned to thanks

Very cool video. The dark material with the fluorescing blue spots resembles some cleiophane I have seen. I would be curious to know what the assay said.

Certain carbon steels have vanadium in it. The alloys make the carbon steels extremely tough and help create a very sharp edge.

I would love to be able to afford a bunch of the rock to set up in a aquarium with a black light,to have that beautiful color at night.

Try the Geiger on those bright cyan locations!