A model for uranium occurrence in the Late Cambrian Clarendon Springs Formation: Implications for groundwater quality in northwestern Vermont.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Groundwater produced from fractured bedrock of the Clarendon Springs Formation is enriched in uranium and alpha radiation in some areas of northwestern Vermont, but this issue has not been examined in all areas where the Clarendon Springs Formation occurs. Previous research by the Vermont Geological Survey in Chittenden County has indicated that the radioactivity in the Clarendon Springs Formation is associated with 'black-chip' breccia horizons that are speculated to be rich in U-bearing phosphorite minerals. National Uranium Resource Evaluation (NURE) surveys from the 1970s identified uranium anomalies associated with the Clarendon Springs Formation in Franklin Country of northwestern-most Vermont, but no systematic study of bedrock and well water chemistry has been performed in this area. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to determine if the concentration and distribution of radioactivity in the Highgate area is confined to the Clarendon Springs breccia horizons and whether or not the radioactivity is being mobilized into drinking water, resulting in elevated uranium and/or gross alpha in private bedrock wells. 61 bedrock samples were collected across the Highgate area of the Clarendon Springs Formation as well as other formations. Using both ICP-AES and ICP-MS, geochemical data indicates a correlation between uranium concentration and phosphorus content particularly in localized Clarendon Springs Formation black chip breccias near the Vermont-Quebec border. For example, bedrock in this area contains up to 9.85 % P2O5 and 79.6 ppm uranium. XRD analysis shows that the U rich phosphorite mineral in the black chip breccia in this area is flouroapatite. 27 domestic water samples were collected and 25 % contain elevated gross alpha (between 5 to 19 pCi/L). The origin of uranium in the Clarendon Springs Formation is related to syndepositional tectonics that produced the down-dropped Franklin Basin in Late Cambrian time which led to the deposition of U-rich phosphorite minerals through marine upwelling currents that deposited in the black chip breccias. Mineralogy, mineral textures and chemistry were explored through a combination of XRD, SEM-WDS and ICP-AES/MS in order to better understand the speciation of U in the rocks sampled.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".