![]() By the end of 1942, the UK and Canada had established the Montreal Laboratory to develop nuclear weapons. The fission of uranium, the method used to harness the energy found within the atom, was discovered in 1939. and the UK in their efforts to produce a nuclear bomb. Because of its strategic importance, theĬanadian government bought the company one year after.ĭuring WWII, Canada joined the U.S. With the uranium needed to develop the nuclear bomb. In 1941, the private mine was reopened to supply the U.S. and what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, in response to the overwhelming demand for uranium driven by the Manhattan Project.Ī miner hauling a car of uranium-bearing ore at Eldorado Mine of Great Bear Lake, NWT, c. In 1942, the federal government purchased and nationalized Eldorado's uranium-related assets.įor the duration of WWII, Eldorado's Port Hope facility refined ore from many countries, including the U.S. ![]() military with the uranium needed to produce the nuclear bomb.įrom the mine, located near Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories, uranium-bearing ore was extracted and shipped thousands of kilometres to Eldorado's milling and refining facility in Port Hope, Ontario. ![]() During WWII, a Canadian company, Eldorado Gold Mining Company, reopened a recently closed radium mine, (the presence of radium is closely associated with that of uranium) to supply the U.S. The early expansion of Canada's uranium industry was driven by the military's interest in the development and production of nuclear weapons. This multinational agreement sealed the general terms which would later define Canada's role in the Manhattan Project and the nuclear weapons programs of the Allies. was signed by Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Manhattan Project, which would build a nuclear bomb.Ī year later, the Québec Agreement between the UK and the U.S. Howe, Minister of Canada's wartime Department of Munitions and Supply, famously gave the go ahead for the Montreal Laboratory (forerunner of the Chalk River Laboratories) with the simple words “Okay, let's go." The laboratory would become associated with the U.S. After negotiations between the United Kingdom and Canada, agreement was reached. The British government was looking for a partner to relocate its Cambridge-based nuclear laboratory during the war to facilitate collaboration with the U.S. It was in the midst of WWII, on August 17, 1942, that Canada formally decided to enter the nuclear age. All transfers of nuclear materials for non-peaceful purposes were halted the following year. Canada also sold irradiated (used) nuclear fuel, from which plutonium was extracted, to the U.S. Less well known to most, perhaps, is our involvement in research to produce and extract plutonium as part of the Manhattan Project, which ended in 1946. Canada continued to be a supplier of uranium for military purposes for two decades after the war. The better-known chapter of that history is probably Canada's participation in the Manhattan Project during the Second World War (WWII), when our country supplied and refined uranium for use in U.S. The extraction and processing of uranium as well as research into the production of nuclear materials for military purposes are part of Canada's history. Weapons, the ZEEP reactor was designed by a team of Canadian, NRX and NRU reactors (under construction). ![]() Laboratories buildings contained the ZEEP, Located about 200 km north of Ottawa, Ontario, Chalk River ![]()
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