Behavior of organic matter in ground water during infiltrational epigenesis

Mobilization, migration, and precipitation of uranium (and, by inference, also of Cu, Mo, Hg, As, Au, Sn and other metals) are shown to be contingent upon zonal behavior and transformations of organic substance in subsurface waters, against the background of comprehensive geochemical studies of a margin of an artesian oil-gas basin, a zone-by-zone analysis of aquifers within the depth range of the infiltrational epigeneses. Experiments with susceptibility of uraniferous organic substance to microbiological action proved that organic complexes of uranium, so stable at high temperatures and in the presence of, e.g. bioling 6N HC1, are anaerobically decomposed, with the consequent liberation of uranium as a mobile carbonate from which it is easily but relatively slowly precipitated, under certain conditions. – V.P. Sokoloff.