Geigers in the Grant
FARTHER north, in the Dartmouth College Grant, the footing was still firm and a modern-day search was under way. DARTMOUTH HUNTS FOR URANIUM the newspaper headlines proclaimed, with accuracy.
The announcement that the College Would begin prospecting for uranium on its 27,000-acre wilderness tract in northern New Hampshire was made by Robert S. Monahan '29, the College Forester. Sam Brugnot, property custodian at the Grant, has been equipped with a Geiger counter in the hope that as he covers his forested domain the instrument might start clicking violently and pinpoint a radioactive vein in the granite.
The decision to begin active prospecting was prompted by reports of a recent uranium strike in North Rumford, Maine, about 33 miles southeast of the Grant, plus the fact that the White Mountain area is among the world's most radioactive. Official reports of the U. S. Geological Survey have shown that the granite of the Conway area contains a percentage of uranium as high as .003, or ten times the average. The percentage of thorium, another radioactive element present in the Conway granite, is as high as .010. According to scientists at the California Institute of Technology, up to 40% of the radioactive elements in granite are soluble in acid and may be extracted.
There is nothing far-fetched about prospecting for uranium in New Hampshire, the surveys show. Underlying some 400 to 500 square miles of the State are countless tons of uranium contained in the native granite, and although this tremendous mass is widely dispersed, there is always the chance of locating a concentrated vein that separated out by itself when the Conway granite cooled and solidified. This possibility has been known since 1946, and a number of prospecting teams have been busy. The discovery of a commercially feasible vein in nearby North Rumford has lifted hopes all around, and Dartmouth, with Sam Brugnot on the job anyway and nothing but the cost of a Geiger counter to lose, has decided to take a fling at the prospecting game.
Timber cuttings on the Dartmouth Grant have produced urgently needed funds for the College and provided scholarships for many a New Hampshire boy. It is intriguing to think of the new meaning that "the granite of New Hampshire" might take on for Dartmouth.
