How was the Witwatersrand discovered - the world's largest deposit of gold ore containing uranium? Detailed answer

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How was the Witwatersrand discovered - the world's largest deposit of gold ore containing uranium? Detailed answer

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How was the Witwatersrand discovered - the world's largest deposit of gold ore containing uranium?

In the entire history of mankind, about 100 thousand tons of gold have been mined on planet Earth, and half of it has been extracted from the mines of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Sometimes more than a thousand tons of precious metal were mined here in a year. And this unique deposit was discovered quite by accident.

In 1886, the farmer Walker, who lived near the city of Johannesburg, noticed a stone with brass-colored sparkles. I decided, just in case, to crush the rock and wash the sand in a basin of water. As is often the case with new gold prospectors, Walker was wrong: the brassy grains weren't gold. It was the mineral pyrite, an iron sulfide of little value. But besides pyrite, at the bottom of the basin with washed crushed rock, there was a thin bright yellow strip of real golden sand!

Thus was discovered the gold of the Witwatersrand, the world's greatest accumulation of precious metal. Subsequently, it turned out that uranium is also concentrated here, along with gold. Thus, the value of the deposit has increased even more.

Author: Kondrashov A.P.

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