How Canada supplied uranium for the Manhattan Project

In the past couple of years, the public imagination has been taken up with all things nuclear — the bomb, energy and waste. The film Oppenheimer recasts the story of the bomb as a Promethean and largely American narrative, while the series Fallout depicts a post-nuclear world. Russia has repeatedly emphasized its readiness for nuclear conflict. Nuclear energy has been regaining popularity as a hedge against climate change. 

And yet, the story of Canada's nuclear legacy — and our connection to the bombs that the U.S. military dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing tens of thousands in an instant — is rarely told.

The documentary Atomic Reaction examines the impact of the radioactive materials mined in a Dene community in the Northwest Territories in the 1930s and '40s. That radioactive ore was transported thousands of kilometres south, via Canada's "Atomic Highway," to be refined in Port Hope, Ont. And the uranium was used in the Manhattan Project, which developed those atomic bombs. 

A mineral with immense power 

This Canadian story began in 1930. Gilbert LaBine, a co-founder of Eldorado Gold Mines, discovered a rich deposit of radioactive pitchblende ore — containing radium, uranium and polonium — as well as silver, on the eastern shores of Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories. The site, on the traditional lands of the Sahtúgot'įnę Dene, came to be known as Port Radium. In a stroke, the country had entered the atomic age. 

The Eldorado mine would first produce medical and industrial radium. Discovered in 1898, radium was first put to use in cancer therapy, and because of its success, it was soon considered an "all-powerful health tonic" and added to everything from chocolates to glow-in-the-dark paint. Later, the mine supplied the uranium that enabled the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bombs. 

Until 1960, the mine's pitchblende ore was transported by boat and barge over 2,200 kilometres of rivers, lakes and portages to the railhead in Waterways, Alta. (now Fort McMurray). From there, it travelled some 3,000 kilometres by train to Port Hope, Ont., just east of Toronto.

Port Hope: 'The town that radiates friendliness'

In 1932, Eldorado constructed a radium-processing plant in Port Hope, the only such refinery in North America. Eldorado secured an abandoned waterfront factory and hired Marcel Pochon, a former student of radioactivity pioneers Marie and Pierre Curie, to mass-produce radium. 

By 1936, the first grams of radium salts had been produced. (More than six tonnes of pitchblende are needed to produce a gram of radium.) However, by the late 1930s, Eldorado's radium business was in decline. Competition with Belgium's mine in the Congo was fierce, and global radium prices had fallen. In 1940, the Port Radium mine closed. 

But soon, Eldorado's and Port Hope's fortunes radically changed. Uranium, previously considered waste from the processing of radium, became a strategic commodity. In 1942, LaBine's Eldorado signed contracts with the U.S. military to supply uranium to the fledgling Manhattan Project, and the mine at Port Radium quietly reopened. In 1943, the company changed its name to Eldorado Mining and Refining, and in early 1944 the Canadian government took over the company and made it a Crown corporation. 

The Port Hope refinery processed both Canadian and Congolese ores for the Manhattan Project. Eldorado continued to refine military-grade uranium for the Americans until 1965. The facility currently converts nuclear-grade uranium trioxide into uranium hexafluoride or uranium dioxide, used in nuclear reactors around the world. In the 1970s, a billboard leading into town even read, "Beautiful old Port Hope. The town that radiates friendliness." Today, the plant is owned by Cameco, one of the world's largest publicly traded uranium companies. 

A lasting legacy and a massive cleanup

In Délı̨nę, a Dene community near Port Radium, a dark shadow remains after so many residents worked in the mine without being told they were involved in the Manhattan Project. And later, Dene miners started dying of lung cancer, earning the community of Délı̨nę the grim nickname the "Village of Widows."

In 2005, a national report examining the health and environmental effects of the mine concluded there was no scientific link between cancer rates in Délı̨nę and mining activities in the area. But another study by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission the following year found increased rates of lung cancer in mine workers. People in the community still feel fear and anxiety about Port Radium's impact on their health.

But the story of Eldorado and Port Hope also includes radioactive and chemical contamination. 

Today, the municipalities of Port Hope and neighbouring Clarington are the sites of the largest volume of historic low-level radioactive waste in Canada — a result of spillage, leakage and widespread disposal of contaminated fill and other materials.

Major radioactive contamination in the area first came to light in the late 1960s, but little was done. 

It wasn't until 1975 that the public started to become aware of the problem, when St. Mary's elementary school was abruptly closed. Eldorado had detected gamma radiation in the school's parking lot and dangerously high levels of radon gas in the school; the building had unknowingly been built on contaminated fill from Eldorado's operations some 15 years earlier. 

The school closure set in motion a flurry of activity. It came to light that radioactive and chemical waste — estimated at roughly two million cubic metres — had been dumped directly into the harbour beside the plant and in ravines around town and used in the construction of homes, basements, driveways, businesses, roads, schools and other public buildings. Properties were surveyed for radiation levels; several hundred of them were remediated; and some 100,000 tonnes of contaminated soil and materials were relocated to a site at Chalk River, operated by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL). Still, the scope and severity of the contamination was not fully understood.

In 2001, the Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) began — a government plan to ensure the safe long-term management of historic low-level radioactive waste.

In 2012, the minister of natural resources announced an investment of $1.28 billion over 10 years for the PHAI. A radiological survey of approximately 4,800 public and private properties began, along with project design, an environmental assessment and community engagement. 

Today, many sites await cleanup, and waste is still produced and stored at the Port Hope facility.