25, 1946. publ-c TONS URANIUM ORE MISSINGJHBRAZIL Mystery Surrounds Atomic Bomb Ingredient Extracted During War, Stored (By Cable to The New York Times and The Gazette.) Rio de Janeiro, July 23. (Delayed) Mystery surrounds the whereabouts of several tons of uranium ore, an important ingredient of the atomic bomb, which was extracted in Brazil during the war in connection with other mining operations and stored for a time near the town of Curraes Novos in the state of Rio Grande do Norte. This uranium was obtained through a costly process, carried on during the war, of extracting several metafs mica, beryl and tan- tame from small pieces of ore-bearing rock known as pegmatites, which are found in quantity in several parts of Brazil, including the state of Minas Gereas, in the northeastern part of the country. The uranium ore was a by-product of this operation. It is insisted that no big veins of uranium ore like that at Slave Lake, Canada, from which the ingredients for the first atomic bombs came, has been found in Brazil yet, despite the fact that much of the country has the same archezoic rock in which uranium ore is found in Canada. But there is a huge problem of atomic control m Brazil nevertheless, because from the sand along no less than 700 miles of Brazil's scacoast comes thorium, which also lias been used in making atomic bombs and is said to have radioactive properties. Although the Brazilian Government is understood to have taken steps to see that shipments of materials from which atomic bombs can be made do not fall into "wrong hands," it is admittedly hard to control the long stretches of mona-zite sand along the coast of the states of Rio de Janeiro, Espirito Santo and Bahia. Thorium is said to be obtainable in quantities only in Brazil and India, and what hap-pens to extracts from these sands is believed to be of vital importance to the United States' security It is reported here that cargoes from the beaches have left Brazil for ports vinderstood to be in Britain and France, but no informed unofficial observer will say posi tively that same may not have been transshipped to, say, the Soviet Union. It is also conceded that smuggling cannot be ruled out after 11:02 "He within the Fifth roof