South Terras mine - March 2020 (permission visit)

[Newage]

Hi All

Day 3 of our road trip saw the boys head from Wales to darkest Cornwall to a mine that has fascinated me for a couple of years - after a metric bucket load of emails I ended up with permission to do the mine.

It`s not that big anymore as the 3 or 4 lower levels were sealed, some of the surface process building still exist in the woods.

A wee bit of History - South Terras mine was worked from 1870 up until 1930, it was worked for Iron a bit of Tin and - Uranium and Radium, the Uranium was in the form of a black ore called Pitchblende.

The area of the mine is very radioactive (VERY BLOODY RADIOACTIVE).

Pictures of bits of the surface features

Ochre works

Dressing building

Top of the pump shaft

Now to the underground bits, Like I said its not that big but its plenty "Hot" inside.

Soooo - How bad is this place - BAD....
I did take my Geiger counter and driving to the location it started to show much higher levels of background radiation the normal reading should be around 0.03uSv/h to a high level of 0.65uSv/h with a maximum counts per minutes (CPM) of 5-99, in the mine my Geiger counter alarm was just going off constantly.
Below is a picture taken at the back of the mine, I did crawl about in the back.

Right that will do for now, thanks for looking and all comments are most welcome.
There are a few more pictures on my FlickR site at :-

https://www.flickr.com/photos/newage2/albums/72157713469694626

Cheers Newage

 

[fluffy5518]

Mate, you missed the most important bits of information.
1. Any reading of more than 6 uSv/h is stated in the Geiger counter Manuel as "Evacuate the area immediately and report information to the authorities" The reading at the mine rear was 10.54 !!!
2. The readings in the vicinity were at least ten times (i believe) more radioactive than all the sites at Chernobyl bar two. No doubt you will correct me if im giving false gen.
3. Twelve hours at the mine will give you one years worth of your max, safe, dosage !!

 

[Newage]

Hi Mate

Yes indeed 1 and 2 are spot on, not sure about number 3

Cheers Newage (Now with bits falling off)

 

[wolfism]

Interesting post, didn't appreciate that uranium ores were mined anywhere in this country.

 

[Newage]

There were about 6 mines in Cornall that mined Pitchblende/Uranium/Radium, on the west coast is Wheal Edward which mined Uranium for some time, there are 2 spoil tips that are hot as hell.

Wheal Edward engine house taken from the hot spoil heap.

Cheers Newage