Use of Canadian Uranium in the World's First Atomic Bombs

Canadian Coalition
for Nuclear
Responsibility

Regroupement pour
la surveillance
du nucléaire

Use of Canadian Uranium
~ in the World's First Atomic Bombs ~

Verbatim Quotations from Authoritative Sources

prepared by G. Edwards, Ph.D., 1998

Excerpts from

Port Radium Memorial

Eldorado: Canada's National Uranium Company
by Robert Bothwell, University of Toronto

Canada's Nuclear Story
by Wilfrid J. Eggleston

Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb
by Vincent G. Jones

Linking Legacies:
Connecting the Cold War
Nuclear Productions Processes
To Their Environmental Consequences

Strategic Procurement for Manhattan
by William Chenoweth

Excerpts from:

Port Radium Memorial

text engraved on a bronze plaque
attached to a five-foot tall concrete cairn
at the site of the original Eldorado Mine
on the Eastern Shore of Great Bear Lake

Port Radium, Northwest Territories,
prepared by George Woolett
for Echo Bay Mines, 1985

from Port Radium Memorial

text engraved on a bronze plaque attached to a five-foot tall concrete cairn
at the site of the original Eldorado Mine on the Eastern Shore of Great Bear Lake

Port Radium, Northwest Territories,
prepared by George Woolett for Echo Bay Mines in 1985

"On May 16, 1930, Gilbert Labine discovered a vein containing silver and pitchblende near this site. The discovery led to the development of the Eldorado Mine and the townsite of Port Radium by his company, Eldorado Gold Mines. The Eldorado Mine commenced production of silver and radium in 1933.
"The mine was the only source of radium outside of the Belgian Congo. Because of the high demand for radium for use in medical treatment, this source was of world significance.
"The Eldorado Mine was closed in 1940 due to World War II and an over-supply of radium."

"The mine was re-opened in 1942 by Eldorado Mining and Refining Ltd., a federal crown company, to supply uranium for the Manhattan Project (the development of an atomic bomb).

"Processing of the radium and uranium ore resulted in the establishment of a world class refining facility at Port Hope, Ontario.

"Exhaustion of the uranium ore led to mine closure in 1960".

. . . back to TABLE OF CONTENTS

Excerpts from:

Eldorado:
Canada's National Uranium Company

by Robert Bothwell
The official history of Eldorado Nuclear Ltd.,
commissioned by Eldorado Nuclear Ltd.

University of Toronto Press
Toronto, 1984

from Eldorado: Canada's National Uranium Company

On 6 August 1945, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan....
[Canadian Minister of Munitions and Supply, C. D.] Howe was ready for the occasion. As a member of the Combined Policy Committee, he knew ... it was intended to use the bomb to bring the Japanese war to an end....

The Honourable C. D. Howe
As minister responsible for Canada's part of the allied atomic project, Howe and his lieutenant, C. J. Mackenzie, had drafted a statement... in which the minister said that
From the Interlude, "War Into Cold War", p. 157
Alone of the three powers, Canada had not had a change of government. Mackenzie King was still prime minister.... "How strange it is," King wrote in his diary on 11 October [1945], "that I should find myself at the very centre of the problem, through Canada possessing uranium, having contributed to the production of the bomb, being recognized as one of the three countries to hold most of the secrets. "
From the Interlude, "War Into Cold War", p. 159
from Chapter 3: From Radium to Uranium
The New York Times editorialized on 3 Feb. [1939] ... that splitting the uranium atom meant 'the release of enormous amounts of energy.'... That which released energy could also cause an explosion. What exploded could be used in war....
There were three possible sources of uranium.... One was now in German hands [Czechoslovakia], and the other two were the Belgian Congo and 'Arctic Canada'. [ pp. 84-86 ]
from Chapter 4: Private into Public
On the morning of 15 June 1942, three men were ushered into the office of the prime minister of Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King. One was familiar to the prime minister: Malcolm MacDonald, the British high commissioner.... MacDonald introduced his companions ... Professor G. P. Thompson [and] Michael Perrin.
What the British wanted, King learned, 'was the acquisition of some property in Canada, so as to prevent competition in price on a mineral much needed in the manufacture of explosives.' Perrin then took over. What was involved, he told the Canadian leader, was a 'military weapon of immense destructive force,' based on intra-atomic energy. Naturally it also had implications for industrial power later, but for the moment the bomb was the thing. Perrin recalled that 'a look of absolute horror and panic' stole over King's face as the lecture proceeded. 'The first country to possess a military weapon of this kind would win the war,' King was told....
Another meeting was convened, this time with Howe presiding and C. J. Mackenzie, president of the National Research Council, sitting at his side.... Once the scientific preliminaries were over discussion centred directly on radium and uranium supply.... It was obviously important that the government 'control' Eldorado.
The British delegation contemplated acquiring control for themselves and the Americans, in effect locating a small and autonomous part of Tube Alloys and the Manhattan Project [the British and American code names for the A- bomb project] on Canadian soil. This idea was now put to Howe who did not reject it.... From this emerged a conclusion that eventually Eldorado would be subject to tripartite control.... The Americans were to be informed ... and their approval sought.
The most surprising thing about this proposal is that C.D. Howe agreed to it. It was, on the face of it, a most unusual proposal.... [pp. 119-121]
from Chapter 3: From Radium to Uranium
In May 1941, [ Eldorado ] sold Lyman Briggs [the Chairman of Roosevelt's Uranium Committee] six or eight tons of uranium oxide....
It is impossible to know what the company or its president made of this, but it is reasonable to suppose that they knew it had to do with the military applications of uranium.
Early in March 1942, [Eldorado received] an order for 60 tons of uranium oxide, approved by [ Vannevar Bush, ] the head of the US atomic project....
The 60-ton order from the Americans was enough to re-open the mine.... In other, older days the news would have been trumpeted from the rooftops. In March 1942 it was a secret.
Work at the Mallinckrodt Chemical Company in St. Louis Missouri ... improved the ... [Canadian] uranium oxide 'to a degree of purity seldom achieved even on a laboratory scale,' as the Manhattan Project later reported.... This breakthrough eliminated a botleneck that might have proved fatal to any hope of constructing a bomb for use in World War II.
Uranium oxide from Eldorado ('grossly impure commercial oxide,' according to the official 1945 Smyth Report) could now be shipped to St. Louis, and then sent on....
Starting in May 1942, therefore, Eldorado shipped 15 tons a month. The company assisted the Americans by reducing the impurities in its oxide to what the latter considered a more reasonable level -- one per cent or less. To do that, it merely had to clean up piles of oxide in the refinery yard, start emptying its silos, and begin forwarding concentrates piled up at Waterways, Alberta, and, once the Great Bear Lake mine reopened, the concentrates there as well. It would only be in 1943 that the misadventures in mining in the Arctic would begin to have an impact on Eldorado's ability to deliver on its contracts. [pp. 108-9]
If [the mine at] Great Bear Lake was really to get going, the Americans were told, the next contingent of 150 men would have to go in almost immediately. To supply them with equipment, and to keep them in fresh food, would require regular flights in and out.... Could the Americans expedite the scheduled delivery of two Lockheed Lodestar aircraft by nine months, changing the delivery date from February 1943 to May 1942?
By July, by air and by water, LaBine's supplies were getting through. Fortunately there was a reserve of ore available for instant shipment, having been abandoned on the docks in June 1940. But it would take longer than expected to get the mine back into production....

Removing ore from the Great Bear Lake mine, mid-1930s

Flying radium and silver concentrates in winter to railhead

One of Eldorado's ore-laden barge convoys.
photo credits: Eldorado Resources Limited
in Eldorado: Canada's National Uranium Company
The mine was geared to maximum production. The Americans wanted as much uranium as possible, as fast as possible. [p. 104]
Those who got to Great Bear were better treated than their predecessors... In 1943 a recreation hall sprang up, complete with library, pool tables, store, and movie facilities. In 1944 a bowling alley was added. But if conditions above ground were better, those below ground were in many respects worse. The basic cause was the tendency of Great Bear Lake to flood the mine.... [p. 105]
Despite all the rush, and the selection of only the best stopes for mining, production ... tended to fall. Its best month, August 1943, yielded only 80,000 pounds of U₃O₈ embodied in concentrates. By December, the worst month, yield was down to 18,454 pounds.... The Americans were not pleased by this development, which Eldorado's management did its best to conceal. 'It will be noted,' a U.S. Army geologist reported in early 1944, 'that the mine is behind in production some 27 tons of U₃O₈ as of April 1944 and that it has continued to fall behind continuously since 1 December [1943]. Unless this rate of production is considerably increased ... it seems unlikely that the contract commitments can be met.'...
Some of the blame definitely attaches to the company. In the first place, the pace of demand was more than the company seems to have anticipated, and more than it could satisfy. But while granting that the demand was American, the decision on how to supply -- at what rate, and at what cost -- was Canadian. [p. 106]
It might seem that the disappointing returns from the Eldorado mine would prove embarrassing to the company and distressing to its client, the United States government. So, up to a point, they were. But the United States did not depend entirely or even mainly on the output of the mine. Neither, as we shall see, did Eldorado's refinery at Port Hope.
It will be recalled that there were two major sources of uranium available to the would-be bomb-makers on the allied side -- the Belgian Congo and Great Bear Lake. Both Great Bear Lake and the Union Minière pit at Shinkolobwe were shut down in 1940, and the Shinkolobwe mine in fact remained closed until 1944.
In 1939 rich concentrates from Shinkolobwe were introduced into the United States, and there they sat, unwanted and largely forgotten, in a warehouse on Staten Island in New York harbour. Like Eldorado, the Union Minière also seems to have had uranium concentrates in transit inside the Congo, or piled up around the mine; the total of concentrates at its disposal, accordingly, was the 1200 tons from Staten Island, plus about 900 tons in the pipeline between Katanga & the Atlantic Ocean.... [p. 107]
The first 60-ton contract [for Canadian uranium] was swiftly succeeded by another....
On 16 July [Eldorado] negotiated a contract for 350 tons of uranium....
On 22 December 1942, [Eldorado signed] another order for 'five hundred tons of U₃O₈ ,' either commercial grade or purified. 'This order,' [it was] stipulated, 'is to follow immediately the completion of our present order [for 350 tons] and should be delivered before December 31st, 1944....
Eldorado was now committed to supply 850 tons, in total, to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in addition to the 60 tons first contracted for, and supplied, in the spring of 1942....
That was not all.... Pregel [Eldorado's US sales agent], in the summer of 1942, was attempting to buy the Union Minière's Staten Island uranium stock.... To refine it, he would have to get an export licence.... When an application for such a licence came before the responsible officials at the State Department in August 1942, it occurred to someone that the army might have an interest in what was happening. The army did. Within days ... the world's largest and richest source of uranium passed into the hands of the U.S. Army.
What the army now had was concentrates, rich concentrates to be sure, which still had to be refined. There was only one place where that could be speedily done, and that was Port Hope.
What did this mean to Eldorado's ability to perform its existing contracts? The capacity of the refinery in 1942-43 was between 120 and 145 tons of feed per month. The Katangese ores were different from those produced at Eldorado's Great Bear Lake mine. If the Belgian ore had priority, then Eldorado's own ore would have to wait until the Belgian order was finished, since the two required quite different methods of treatment. Consequently, it was agreed that even the first, 350-ton contract, which was still pending, would be but into abeyance' until the Belgian work was done....
Thus, Eldorado's principal importance in the wartime atomic energy project was established. In the earliest stages of the Manhattan Project, down to December 1942, Eldorado ores and (ultimately) oxide played a key role.... In the fall of 1942, however, things changed. It was not the slow-moving Eldorado mine that would determine the pace of the Manhattan Project, but the rich African concentrates from Union Minière. Now it was the Eldorado refinery that became crucial to the bomb project.... [pp. 109-112]
The Belgian contract was supposed, as of May 1943, to last until the end of 1943, at which time the outstanding balance of the 350-ton contract [for Great Bear Lake uranium] would resume. There were 195 tons outstanding, and at the rate of a ton a day that would take Eldorado into the summer of 1944.
The Americans had other plans.
First, they had some lower-grade Belgian concentrate ... [as well as] another contract for 500 additional tons of Eldorado oxide [from Great Bear Lake]....
The Americans also had 200 tons of oxide deribed from American vanadium residues. [p. 134]
[Following the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, C. J. Mackenzie was] asked: Just how important was Canada?
Not as important as some believed, Mackenzie replied. The Manhattan Project was 'not entirely dependent on Canadian ore' and a bomb might have been managed entirely 'without our material.' Nevertheless, uranium was scarce, and Canada's uranium had probably gained in importance because of the scarcity. [p. 160]

... back to TABLE OF CONTENTS

Excerpts from:

Canada's Nuclear Story

by Wilfrid J. Eggleston
The Official History of
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
(commissioned by AECL)

Clarke, Irwin & Co.
Toronto, 1965.

from "Canada's Nuclear Story" :

The secrecy that shrouded atomic energy research and development during the war years was absolute.... I think it is fair to suggest that early in 1942, when the British proposed a joint programme to be carried out in Canada, most of us who were engaged in pressing war research had reservations about the practicability of producing an atomic bomb in time for use in the current war.

From the Foreword by Dr. C. J. Mackenzie,
President of the Canadian National Research Council
during the WWII A-Bomb Project.

Debate on the use of the bomb will continue but it can be argued that it brought the Second World War to a sudden end and may have saved the lives of millions of people in so doing. One of the incidental effects of this abnormal wartime programme was the early involvement of Canada on a scale highly improbable under other circumstances. The greatest scientific project of research and development in Canada's history followed. Happily the foundations thus laid in an era of terror were capable of important peacetime applications in the next two decades.

From Chapter 1: Canada Enters the Nuclear Age. p. 4

[In 1940] Events were brewing ... which made it inevitable that Canada's help would be sought as a supplier of materials essential in the making of a bomb. The uranium deposits on the shores of Great Bear Lake were among the richest in the world; and at Port Hope, Ontario, was located the only uranium refinery in operation in North America.

There was, as it happened, a substantial stockpile of uranium oxide at Port Hope. This had not been accumulated in shrewd anticipation of the nuclear age; it was merely a by-product of a radium refinery.... At all events, uranium oxide in quantity was available for refining and use in any wartime application that might materialize.... [Chapter 4: Canada Is Drawn In, p. 41]

The first wartime interest in Eldorado's unique holdings was shown by the United States. In the Spring of 1941, Dr. Lyman J. Briggs, acting as Chairman of Roosevelt's Advisory Committee on Uranium, placed an order with Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd. for eight tons of refined uranium oxide. This was required for preliminary experiments....

Less than a month after Pearl Harbour, the U.S. Planning Board began a survey of all key strategic materials. This brought out the information that Eldorado had three hundred tons of uranium concentrate [ not yet refined ] located at Port Hope, Ontario. It was also noted that Eldorado's mine at Great Bear Lake could, if re-opened, produce up to three hundred tons of good grade uranium ore a year.

In the following month, the U.S. Planning Board recommended the purchase of two hundred tons of uranium oxide from Eldorado....

In April 1942 Gilbert LaBine was invited to Ottawa by the Hon. C. D. Howe, Minister of Munitions & Supply to talk over the offer.... The whole transaction, on the insistence of both U.S. and Canadian governments, was to be conducted with the greatest secrecy. In view of the tremendous possibilities of uranium fission which had just opened up, the question of the wisdom of leaving such a strategic war material in exclusive private hands occurred at once to Mr. Howe.... [Chapter 4: Canada Is Drawn In, pp. 44-45]

The second approach came from the United Kingdom. This time it involved Canada's prime minister. It was his initiation into these ultra-secret matters....

The Canadian prime minister's diary disclosed that on June 15, 1942, he "had an interview with Malcolm MacDonald [the British High Commissioner] and two scientists from England" about "the acquisition of some property in Canada, so as to prevent competition in price on a mineral much needed in connection with the manufacture of explosives."...

Mackenzie King ... agreed to have the matter discussed with his Minister of Munitions and Supply and with C. J. Mackenzie.... "They told me there had been complete agreement among them as to the desirability of Government not only controlling, but owning, the particular mineral deposit in question, and I was asked if I would authorize the Government getting the majority of shares from the owner.... I agreed to this step being taken at once so long as the Americans were advised...."

Dr. C. J. Mackenzie left for Washington later on in the week and arrived there on June 19. The entry he subsequently made in his journal reflects the rising tide of uranium activity:

"At 2:30 to see Dr. Bush [Head of the Atomic Bomb Project]. Had a long meeting with him to discuss the work of the S-l [Uranium] Committee. He gave me a clear account of what has happened in the U.S.

"The originators of course, were the scientific people in NDRC [National Defense Research Council], it was then taken up by OSRD [Office of Scientific Research & Development] and the War Office, and later approved by a special committee of Bush, Vice-President Wallace and General Marshall and accepted in principle by the President, who discussed the matter with Churchill....
"Bush showed me a letter to Sir John Anderson on the general uranium problem suggesting co-operation, telling him that the present progress was encouraging and that they were working on three research projects, and that they had contracts ready to let for a large plant which was to be built under the Army.
"Highest priorities have been arranged, and they only await a final green light from the President.

"Bush said he would let me know as soon as he got that final signal which he expected that day but Winston Churchill had just arrived on a flying trip and it probably will be some time before he hears...."

On the specific purpose of his mission to Washington, Dr. Mackenzie wrote: "Bush thinks we should proceed with the acquisitioning of the property [Eldorado].... He thinks there should be an international arrangement as between the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada for post-war control [of uranium]. He is going to England shortly to discuss the matter."

On his return to Ottawa, on June 22, Dr. Mackenzie immediately saw his minister, Mr. Howe, who agreed with Vannevar Bush's recommendations about the Eldorado property and undertook to expedite the acquiring of machinery and equipment necessary to get the Great Bear uranium mine into full production as soon as possible.

Correspondence between Dr Mackenzie and Dr Bush on uranium control continued through-out the summer of 1942. On July 15 Bush wrote to say that he had taken up the matter with President Roosevelt, "who agrees that we should encourage the Canadians to go ahead." On July 22 Dr. Mackenzie wrote to Dr. Bush reporting that shortly after his return from the Washington trip in June, Mr. Howe had started "informal discussions with the parties interested." The minister had re-affirmed "that he would be most willing and anxious to have the [uranium] output allocated in a manner agreeable to the Governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and our own."

On August 29 Mr. Howe sent a letter to Dr. Mackenzie containing information that Eldorado had recently arranged to purchase 500 tons of uranium ore from Afrimet. The ore assayed approximately 68 per cent U₃O₈. It was a part of the stocks of Congo ore then held in the United States. A further 700 tons stocked in the United States, Mr. Howe added, was available from the same source. This purchase would assure Eldorado of the stocks required to meet its current contract with the U.S. Army for uranium oxide. [Chapter 4: Canada Is Drawn In, pp. 45-48]

The Anglo-Canadian nuclear research laboratory in Montreal was established during the fall and winter of 1942-43.... [Chapter 5: A Promising Partnership Deteriorates, p. 54]

On January 2, 1943, Dr. James B. Conant signed a letter addressed to Dr. Mackenzie laying down the terms of American cooperation with the Canadian laboratory in a surprisingly harsh fashion....

Since it formed a historic turning point in relations with the United States, its salient paragraphs are reproduced here:

"Since it is clear that neither your Government or the English can produce elements '49' [plutonium] or '25' [uranium-235] on a time schedule which will permit of their use in this conflict, we have been directed to limit the interchange correspondingly ... in what is, after all, a joint aim -- namely, the production of a weapon to be used against our common enemy in the shortest possible time under conditions of maximum security."

... In part the new attitude was a logical consequence of turning over the problem of producing an atomic weapon to the U.S. Army. Military men, not scientists, were now in the saddle.... [Chapter 5: A Promising Partnership Deteriorates, pp. 64-66]

While the British and the Americans were still at loggerheads over exchange of nuclear information, there was a display of impatience which erupted in Ottawa and affected all three parties....

It concerned the destination of the supplies of uranium ore and refined oxide coming from Canadian sources. The aggressive and relentless drive of General Groves and his American colleagues had resulted in a series of secret private contracts being reached between Eldorado ... and the U.S. Army. For a time the Canadian government was thrust into the indefensible and embarrassing position of not even being able to find out just what deals Gilbert LaBine and his associates had made with the Americans for Canadian ore and oxide.

The Canadian government held all the cards of course, in the event of a showdown. As an autonomous power, it could step in at any time, expropriate the properties of Eldorado ... and take over complete control of its uranium contracts with the United States. This, however, was a step which the Canadian government would be reluctant to take....

And if the British, lacking a satisfactory agreement with the United States, were compelled to go it alone, what about raw materials? In particular, what about uranium? Was Canada in a position to assure an Anglo-Canadian uranium programme sufficient quantities of uranium to get started? Or would they find that the United States meantime had tied up the entire Canadian supply of ore and refined oxide?

In December 1942, Eldorado and the U.S. Army had negotiated new contracts bringing the total order of refined oxide to about 700 tons. Canadian ore deliveries to the Port Hope refinery, assisted by an air lift from the Arctic Circle, rose sharply in 1943. LaBine and the United States' negotiators were aware that the whole transaction required at least the blessing of the Canadian government....

Dr. C. J. Mackenzie went to New York early in July 1943. On July 6 he saw General Groves and told him that the U.S. engineers, by their aggressive enterprise in tying up LaBine and Eldorado for supplies of ore and oxide, had put Canada on the spot.... General Groves replied that the United States' programme was very tight and to allow Canadians to have the amount of uranium oxide they were asking for [for the Montreal lab] might embarrass that programme.... It was agreed something might be done. General Groves explored the idea that the efficiency of the refinery at Port Hope might be increased and that the output of ore at Great Bear Lake might be stepped up at the same time. There would then be enough uranium for both....

Less than two weeks later General Groves and his associate, Colonel Nichols, were in Ottawa seeking a mutually satisfactory answer to the problem of uranium supply.... [Chapter 5: A Promising Partnership Deteriorates, pp. 79-82]

On February 2 at Ottawa, Malcolm Macdonald [the British High Commissioner] telephoned Dr. Mackenzie to say that he had received word that the uranium problem had been discussed at Casablanca between the two leaders [Roosevelt and Churchill] and "one hundred per cent cooperation agreed upon". Dr Mackenzie added, in his journal "what that means I don't know." His skepticism was justified; nothing happened then or for a long time afterwards....

Churchill kept hammering away. He renewed his inquiries during [his] visit to Washington in May 1943.... Still nothing happened....

Fortunately the end of the dispute was in sight. In July 1943, there were renewed meetings in London.... By this time also the historic meeting of the leaders at Quebec City had been arranged, and Tube Alloys [the A-Bomb Project] was on the agenda.

Early in August Sir John Anderson was in Ottawa. On August 8 (as recorded in the Mackenzie King diaries) Sir John had tea at Kingsmere with the Canadian Prime Minister and talked for an hour on the uranium project. He reported, among other matters, that he had "reached an agreement which he thought the President and Churchill would both sign. It made Canada also a party to the development."

On August 10, Mackenzie King arrived in Quebec City for the Quebec Conference. J. W. Pickersgill reports the incident and quotes extensively from the Prime Minister's diary:

"... Churchill discussed the atomic project, which had the code name "Tube Alloys", with Mackenzie King and secured his agreement to the suggestion Churchill planned to propose to President Roosevelt, that C. D. Howe [Canadian Minister of Munitions and Supply] be made a member of a combined policy committee of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada."

Joint action to set up such a committee was taken on August 17. The Articles of Agreement on Tube Alloys [A-Bombs] were signed by Roosevelt and Churchill on August 19....

The text [of the Quebec Agreement] was typewritten. At the bottom, in Roosevelt's handwriting, was the single word Approved and the date August 19, 1943 . The signatures of the two leaders, Roosevelt and Churchill, were appended. It was then a secret document and long remained so; the text was not seen by the public until tabled in the House of Commons at Westminster in April 1954.

The preamble noted it was "vital to our common safety in the present War to bring the Tube Alloys [A-Bomb] project to fruition at the earliest moment." This might be more speedily achieved if all available British and American brains and resources were pooled. It was agreed that:

"We will never use this agency against each other.
"We will not use it against third parties without each other's consent.
"We will not either of us communicate any information about Tube Alloys to third parties except by mutual consent."

The fifth and last section [of the Quebec Agreement] outlined arrangements for "full and effective collaboration." It provided for a Combined Policy Committee, to be set up at Washington, composed of:

The U.S. Secretary of War [U.S.]
Dr. Vannevar Bush [U.S.]
Dr. James B. Conant [U.S.]
Field Marshal Sir John Dill [U.K.]
Colonel the Rt. Hon. J. J. Llewellin [U.K.]
The Honourable C. D. Howe [Canada].

... The new committee met for the first time at the War Department on September 8....

A meeting of the Combined Policy Committee was held on April 13, 1944, in the office of the Secretary of War ... in Washington.... Hon. C. D. Howe ... on April 14 ... reported the decision of the Combined Policy Committee to provide for immediate construction of a large-scale heavy water pilot plant [reactor] in Canada. [Chapter 6: An Agreement Finally Brings Action]

Under a cloak of extreme wartime secrecy a novel wartime establishment had to be brought into being as speedily as possible.... On August 21, 1944, General Leslie Groves was in Canada and was briefed on recent Canadian developments, including the decision to locate the heavy water project at Chalk River....

... back to TABLE OF CONTENTS

Excerpts from:

Manhattan:
The Army and the Atomic Bomb

By Vincent G. Jones
Series: US Army in WWII Specila Studies

Center of Military History, US Army
Washington D.C. 1985

from ''Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb''

In early 1942, the OSRD planning board had located sufficient raw uranium ore in North America to satisfy the anticipated requirements of the project for many months to come....

[The] source was the mine owned by Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd., at Great Bear Lake in Northwest Canada.... The mine itself had been closed and allowed to fill with water in the summer of 1940, because sufficient ore had been stockpiled to meet anticipated demand for five years.... When the OSRD placed a sizable order in 1941, it obtained additional equipment and supplies for getting the mine back into operation and, meanwhile, [ Eldorado ] continued to supply amounts of [ uranium ] oxide refined from the stockpiled ores....

To ensure an adequate supply of uranium oxide, Colonel Nichols directed Stone and Webster to buy 350 tons from [ Eldorado ] to cover the project's needs for the year ahead [ beginning July 7, 1942 ].... Thanks to these measures, by the fall of 1942 [ uranium ] production ... from Eldorado's ore had increased sufficiently to supply the project's requirements.... [ pp. 62-64 ]

Ore procurement activities, which reached a high point in 1944 and then levelled off somewhat in early 1945, were concentrated in three major areas: Africa, Canada, and the United States. Project leaders were aware in 1943 that the wartime needs of the bomb program were likely to exhaust both the immediately available domestic and Canadian deposits, and the security implications of this situation led to a ... policy of using, to the greatest extent possible, ores from foreign sources.

The most significant foreign source was the Belgian Congo.... All Canadian ore ... came from the Great Bear Lake area. [ p. 310 ]

... back to TABLE OF CONTENTS

Excerpts from:

Linking Legacies

Connecting the Cold War
Nuclear Weapons Production Processes
To Their Environmental Consequences
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Environmental Management
Chapter 2:
Nuclear Weapons Production
Processes and History

Washington, D.C., January 1997.

from Linking Legacies
Chapter 2: Nuclear Weapons Production ~ Process and History

Significant Events:
Uranium Mining, Milling, and Refining

[table entry]

During WWII, the United States purchased the uranium content of high-assay uranium ore from the Belgian Congo (now Zaire), supplemented with ore and concentrates from Canada and the Colorado Plateau.... (p.18)

[photo caption]
America's first uranium refinery.

Here and in surrounding buildings, the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works converted raw uranium yellowcake into uranium oxide, greensalt, and uranium hexafluoride.

The Manhattan Project used uranium processed here as fuel for the world's first nuclear reactors and in the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.... (p.19)

Uranium Mining, Milling, and Refining

... About half of the uranium used in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex was imported from Canada, Africa, and other areas. The remainder came from the domestic uranium industry that grew rapidly in the 1950s. The first imported uranium, high-grade "pitchblende" ore containing up to 65 percent uranium oxide by weight, was milled in Canada and by domestic contractors. After World War II, imported uranium was purchased in the form of already-milled concentrates and high-grade ores.... (p.19)

... back to TABLE OF CONTENTS

Excerpts from:

Strategic Procurement for Manhattan

by William Chenoweth
Wyoming Mining Association web site

reprinted from the Trade Magazine "Paydirt"

January 1998

from Strategic Procurement for Manhattan

Finding that adequate raw material was critical to the US war effort, in the early 1940s, the largest available sources of uranium were the Shinkolobwe Mine in the then Belgian Congo, and the Eldorado Mine in Canada's Northwest Territories.

MED [Manhattan Engineering District, U.S. Army] acquired 18.9 million pounds of uranium for the Manhattan Project;
- Colorado Plateau sources accounted for 14 percent. [about 2.65 million pounds]
- The Eldorado provided 2.2 million pounds and
- the Shinkolobwe 13.3 million pounds.
... back to TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Use of Canadian Uranium~ in the World's First Atomic Bombs ~

Verbatim Quotations from Authoritative Sources

Excerpts from

Excerpts from:

Port Radium Memorial

text engraved on a bronze plaque attached to a five-foot tall concrete cairnat the site of the original Eldorado Mine on the Eastern Shore of Great Bear Lake

Port Radium, Northwest Territories, prepared by George Woolett for Echo Bay Mines, 1985

from Port Radium Memorial

Excerpts from:

Eldorado: Canada's National Uranium Company

by Robert Bothwell The official history of Eldorado Nuclear Ltd., commissioned by Eldorado Nuclear Ltd.

University of Toronto PressToronto, 1984

from Eldorado: Canada's National Uranium Company

The Honourable C. D. Howe

From the Interlude, "War Into Cold War", p. 157

From the Interlude, "War Into Cold War", p. 159

Removing ore from the Great Bear Lake mine, mid-1930s

Flying radium and silver concentrates in winter to railhead

One of Eldorado's ore-laden barge convoys.photo credits: Eldorado Resources Limitedin Eldorado: Canada's National Uranium Company

Excerpts from:

Canada's Nuclear Story

by Wilfrid J. Eggleston The Official History of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (commissioned by AECL)

Clarke, Irwin & Co. Toronto, 1965.

from "Canada's Nuclear Story" :

From the Foreword by Dr. C. J. Mackenzie, President of the Canadian National Research Council during the WWII A-Bomb Project.

From Chapter 1: Canada Enters the Nuclear Age. p. 4

Excerpts from:

Manhattan:The Army and the Atomic Bomb

By Vincent G. Jones Series: US Army in WWII Specila Studies

Center of Military History, US ArmyWashington D.C. 1985

from ''Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb''

Excerpts from:

Linking Legacies

Connecting the Cold War Nuclear Weapons Production Processes To Their Environmental Consequences U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental ManagementChapter 2: Nuclear Weapons Production Processes and History

Washington, D.C., January 1997.

from Linking Legacies Chapter 2: Nuclear Weapons Production ~ Process and History

Excerpts from:

Strategic Procurement for Manhattan

by William ChenowethWyoming Mining Association web site reprinted from the Trade Magazine "Paydirt"

January 1998

from Strategic Procurement for Manhattan

Use of Canadian Uranium
~ in the World's First Atomic Bombs ~

text engraved on a bronze plaque
attached to a five-foot tall concrete cairn
at the site of the original Eldorado Mine
on the Eastern Shore of Great Bear Lake

Port Radium, Northwest Territories,
prepared by George Woolett
for Echo Bay Mines, 1985

Eldorado:
Canada's National Uranium Company

by Robert Bothwell
The official history of Eldorado Nuclear Ltd.,
commissioned by Eldorado Nuclear Ltd.

University of Toronto Press
Toronto, 1984

One of Eldorado's ore-laden barge convoys.
photo credits: Eldorado Resources Limited
in Eldorado: Canada's National Uranium Company

by Wilfrid J. Eggleston
The Official History of
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
(commissioned by AECL)

Clarke, Irwin & Co.
Toronto, 1965.

From the Foreword by Dr. C. J. Mackenzie,
President of the Canadian National Research Council
during the WWII A-Bomb Project.

Manhattan:
The Army and the Atomic Bomb

By Vincent G. Jones
Series: US Army in WWII Specila Studies

Center of Military History, US Army
Washington D.C. 1985

Connecting the Cold War
Nuclear Weapons Production Processes
To Their Environmental Consequences
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Environmental Management
Chapter 2:
Nuclear Weapons Production
Processes and History

from Linking Legacies
Chapter 2: Nuclear Weapons Production ~ Process and History

by William Chenoweth
Wyoming Mining Association web site

reprinted from the Trade Magazine "Paydirt"