When you buy uranium ore online from our known sources you’ll always receive a package that reads below .5mRem/hr. On the parcel surface, with a label including text and numbers required by the NRC and USPS or or other carrier. This makes it perfectly legal as an “excepted package” exempt from many considerations that would apply to real hazmats.

Many, many people get confused about a piece of federal code by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission called NRC, 10 CFR, “§ 40.22 Small quantities of source material”. This is frequently misinterpreted as appearing to allow basically any US citizen to posses or even sell limited amounts of refined, radioactive products like DU and indistrial uranium or thorium compounds etc. as long as they intend to use it for constructive purposes. We have communicated directly, at length, with senior officers at the NRC and we can assure you this is not the case. To the technical letter of the law, this does not even apply to tiny samples.

First of all, section 40.22 is intended for institutions, and I quote Betsy Ullrich of the NRC, “…not private individuals”. Secondly sale or “|initial distribution” is prohibited by subsection (e) of said code without an additional, bona fide, applied-for-and-issued license that is difficult to obtain because it requires experts, considerable lab equipment, etc. Thirdly, 40.22 does not apply to 39 of the 50 US states that have become “Agreement States” meaning they have their own, state-level regulations including possession of radioactive materials.

The Answer: Stick with ore! It’s often prettier, can be just as active (or more, as show above), and is generally legal to possess as long as not misused (“generally” as in: there may be certain buildings, communities etc. where it is not permitted).

Because, like so many things, it is perfectly safe when stored and handled properly, unprocessed uranium ore has remained legal to buy, sell, and possess in the United States for many decades.

In the mid-1900’s Geiger counters and “scintillators” (amplified detectors for finding ore at distances) were popular recreational hardware with which families could go camping and prospecting, hoping to find and even sell uranium ore in a rather prolonged “uranium rush”. National parks used to issue pamphlets recommending safe practices in collecting uranium and taking it home (like washing hands and not keeping in pockets). While some precautions about nuclear materials have become more rigid since then, the more we know, most of it applies to industrial or military-related substances.

The Parks Service didn’t stop issuing such pamphlets referring to safe uranium-collecting fun because hobbyists got cancer from rocks or anything in subsequent years – they likely stopped because of negative publicity and lack of public understanding. Baseless stigma.

For example, 3 buckets of uranium-bearing rocks were noticed in a Grand Canyon National Park museum. When the story hit the press it went viral and everybody lost their marbles, reporting everywhere that thousands of people including children had been “exposed to dangerous, ionizing radiation”. Despite scientists and officials descending on the situation and determining no one was harmed or really even placed at risk because of the low amounts of uranium involved and the Inverse Square law etc., what mattered was public ignorance, not facts. The big story was the erroneous harm; the confirmation there had never been any danger was of little interest to the press (zero retractions and few follow-ups). So the Parks Service freaked out about their reputation (not safety) and bulldozed any and all uranium rocks far away from rest areas and public access (the the dismay of local hobbyists).