Rutherfordine
Mineral UO2CO3
Take care.
- Radioactive: Keep it in a closed, labelled box away from where people sit or sleep, handle it briefly, wash your hands after, and never grind or cut it.
About it
Yellow to orange fibrous or earthy crusts of uranyl carbonate on altered uraninite. Radioactive; named for physicist Ernest Rutherford, and first found in the Morogoro pegmatites of Tanzania.
- Type
- Mineral
- Group
- Carbonate (uranyl carbonate)
- Formula
- UO2CO3
- Specific gravity
- 5.7
- Streak
- yellow
- Lustre
- earthy, dull, silky
- Crystal system
- Orthorhombic
- Colours
- yellow, orange-yellow, brownish yellow, white
- Transparency
- translucent
- Cleavage and fracture
- perfect in one direction
- Under UV light
- sometimes weak yellow-green under UV
Typical values: real specimens vary. For more, see mindat.org.