Rum Jungle in the Northern Territory of Australia was a fairly wild place in the 1950’s with a number of uranium mines and a lot of people who only wanted to be known by their first names. The legend is that the workers from the mine would sometimes demonstrate how macho they were by drinking Atomic Cocktails.
Recipe:
- One glass of beer
- One teaspoon (or thereabouts) of yellowcake.
- Mix and drink
Yellowcake was so named because it was, in those days a bright yellow powder. The extraction process involved the formation of yellowcake or ammonium diuranate, a slightly soluble compound. The amount was small, so the whole body radiation dose from the gamma radiation would have been fairly small, even to the radiosensitive lining of the gut. The gut mucosa would have given a fairly high level of protection from alpha radiation, due to their short range (around 70 microns). However, some of the uranium would have passed into the bloodstream and thence to the internal organs. The main target organ would have been the kidney and the toxic effects would have been from heavy metal poisoning.
I suspect that this would have been a fairly minor hazard compared to the other hazards of the day, particularly the direct and indirect effects of alcohol, including stabbings, shootings and car accidents. Though the NT was one of the first places in Australia to get seat belts (early 1960’s – heavy aircraft seatbelts with large knobs that rotated to release the belt) and the breathalyser, the distance from Rum Jungle to Darwin would have been deadly.
Today the yellowcake is a gey-green colour as it is calcined and the “yellowcake” exported around the world is a mixture of oxides of uranium, and almost insoluble. An attempt to suicide by ingesting this material was predictably unsucessful. The material just passes straight though the digestive tract, with little toxic side effects, chemical or radiological.
