vi

PREFACE

have made a medium-thin volume. During the period of review, which

was quite extended, so much new material was being reported and so

much older material was being declassified that I was continually up-

dating and amplifying portions of the manuscript. Naturally, these

revised portions also had to be reviewed, occasioning more delay. A

vicious circle was indeed set up. When, in the course of years, the manu-

script had become lengthy enough to make two volumes, the reviewers

unexpectedly gave up and declared the entire script to be unclassified.

Among the features of the book I should like to mention are the micro-

graphs of uranium alloys appearing in Chapter 8. Some of these were

made in 1943 and 1944 by A. U. Seybolt. I selected them because they

are probably the first ever made of the alloy systems in question. Limita-

tions on the size of this book have stopped me from seeking to borrow

and insert many of the excellent micrographs that have appeared in

more recent literature.

Another feature, which I think is unique, occurs in Appendix A of

Volume I and involves a list of uranium minerals. On arranging the

names alphabetically in compiling the list, I noticed that none of the

minerals had the initial letter Q or X. All other letters of the alphabet

were represented as initial letters. It was after additional search and a

little rationalization that I decided to include the names "quisqueite"

and "xenotime."

A point the casual reader is apt to overlook appears in Chapter 3. In

talking about machining uranium, I mentioned that a solution of "acetyl

salicylate" cures tapping "headaches ' when it is used as a coolant and

lubricant. It is interesting that an analgesic should be able to remedy

that kind of a headache.

In this book I have used some words that some readers may look upon

as jargon. I trust that the meaning of "biscuits," "derbies," "reguli,"

"dingots" and even "prills" will be understood in the context of my

usage. The term "solubilize" has been criticized as jargon (comparable

to some of the coined words used in advertising) for "dissolve." In this

book, however, I have never used "solubilize" in that sense, but rather in

the sense of making something amenable to dissolution. In hydro-

metallurgy the use of the term "sorb" may irritate some readers. I have

used it when the mechanism "adsorption" or "absorption" was irrelevant

or unknown. Finally, I should mention the use of the word "adit" as

opposed to "exit." To those Latin scholars who live in a region of super-

highways, which have adits and exits, this might not seem like jargon.

To the consultant of dictionaries, however, the principal denotation of

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