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Terra Nova, 23, 264–269, 2011 Abstract Uranium deposits form in a wide range of geological settings, including deep magmatic to surficial conditions, and range in age from Archaean to recent. These temporal and spatial variations have given rise to an extreme diversity of ore deposits. However, understanding their conditions of formation has remained challenging. This article reports rare earth element (REE) abundances, measured by microbeam methods in uranium oxides, for a series of worldwide uranium occurrences. The REE patterns are very specific to each deposit type and directly reflect the conditions of their genesis. We propose an evaluation of the first‐order parameters controlling the REE behaviour in each mineralised system. This study demonstrates that the REE pattern is the most efficient tool for constraining the geological models of uranium deposits and for genetically discriminating new uranium discoveries. This approach may form the starting point for a new procedure in the fight against nuclear trafficking. Terra Nova, 00, 1–6, 2011

A new analytical method, based on the Raman spectroscopy of the ν(OH) stretching vibration of water, has been developed for the determination of the concentration of chloride in aqueous solutions with the goal of reconstructing the bulk ion content of fluid inclusions that are relics of paleo-fluid circulation in rocks. The method involves calibrating the area of one band of the spectrum difference between pure water and solutions of appropriate composition with respect to the chloride concentration. Calibration curves were constructed for the major geological chemical salts LiCl, NaCl, KCl, CaCl2, and MgCl2, and NaCl–CaCl2 systems. The application to fluid inclusions has been confirmed using synthetic fluid inclusions. For cubic minerals such as fluorite, the calibration curve for the NaCl system correctly estimates the chlorinity. For birefringent minerals, such as quartz, the Raman spectrum of the aqueous solution depends on the orientation of the host crystal. The crystal must be oriented in such a way that one axis of the ellipse of the indicatrix projects parallel to the spectrometer slit. This method complements micro-thermometric data and allows the determination of chlorinity when ice-melting temperature cannot be used.

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