On the tracks of uranium

The information relating to uranium deposits provided by fission track dating allied to micro mapping, is increasingly aiding geologists in their search for new viable deposits of this nuclear material and other commodities such as hydrocarbons. Fission track ages of natural samples are lowered by thermal effects, allowing the fission track technique to serve as a thermometer for tectonothermal events. An important assumption in fission track dating of a mineral is that there has been no track loss since its crystallisation. Solid-state track-detector methods have been developed in recent years in the study of uranium distribution in geological material. The article deals also with a number of problems where fission track micro mapping has been applied where other methods have prove to be inadequate