Quote:
Originally posted by Jaelin
More random factoids about Canada:
The Canadian Shield is the richest mineral deposit on the face of the earth.
[little known fact] All the radioactive elements used in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were given to the US for free by Canada - they were mined in the Canadian Shield [/little known fact]
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Ok - I am not saying I don't believe you. I am just saying that I cannot verify this factoid and I need your help. I found Sone information that pointed to the fact that our Material for the WWII bombs came from Oak Ridge, TN but that most of the material for the bombs made in the 50s and 60s came from Canada.
The Americans, however, still had little technical respect for the work that had been done in Canada, and felt that the U.S. graphite reactors could produce the plutonium for a bomb sooner than the Canadian heavy-water process. It was decided to continue the Canadian work, however, because of its post-war industrial and military plutonium potential. Research was done on plutonium extraction from irradiated natural uranium and reactor construction. The "dust had scarcely settled over Hiroshima and Nagasaki" [24] when the first reactor outside the U.S. -- the Zero Energy Experimental Pile (ZEEP) at the new Chalk River, Ontario laboratory -- was "fired up" in 1945, and work was begun on the National Research X-perimental (NRX) reactor.
"[T]hroughout the 1950s Canada was a major supplier of weapons-grade plutonium -- the essential, deadly element in atomic bombs -- to both the British and U.S. military programmes... Official estimates of the AECB are that about $10-million a year of plutonium was being exported to the United States by 1957. The sale of uranium to the United States was also bringing in about $300-million a year." [30]
I am intrigued by this and would like to learn more Jaelin. Thanks for the help.