Preliminary study of the favorability for uranium in northeastern Oklahoma and southeastern Kansas

A preliminary study was conducted to assess the uranium favorability of northeastern Oklahoma and southeastern Kansas, an area underlain by a stratigraphic sequence that ranges in age from Precambrian to Late Pennsylvanian. The major structural features are the Nemaha anticline, the Ozark uplift, and the Cherokee basin. Water samples analyzed by the Oklahoma State Department of Occupational and Radiological Health show relatively high levels of radium and alpha radiation in the water supplies of some communities in the Ozark uplift area of northeastern Oklahoma. Abnormally high levels of radium have been detected in oil and gas fields in southeastern Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma. There seems to be a correlation between these anomalies and the unconformable onlap of Pennsylvanian sediments over the Ordovician Arbuckle Group. The major part of the granitic core of the Nemaha anticline was exposed in northeastern Kansas and southeastern Nebraska. During Pennsulvanian time, it shed large volumes of arkosic debris into basins adjoining the northern part of the Nemaha anticline