![]() A miner hauling silver and radium ore from the Eldorado, c. 1930 | |
Location | |
---|---|
Location | Port Radium |
Territory | Northwest Territories |
Country | Canada |
Coordinates | 66°05′06″N118°02′17″W / 66.085°N 118.038°W Coordinates: 66°05′06″N118°02′17″W / 66.085°N 118.038°W |
Production | |
Products | Radium, Uranium, Silver, Copper |
History | |
Discovered | 1930 |
Opened | 1932 |
Active | 1932-1940 1942-1960 1975-1982 |
Closed | 1982 |
Owner | |
Company | Echo Bay Mines Ltd |
Year of acquisition | 1975 |
The Eldorado Mine is a defunct mine located in Port Radium, Northwest Territories, Canada. The site, which covers 12 hectares, is located next to Echo Bay in the shore of Great Bear Lake. [1]
The mine was 270 miles by air north of Yellowknife and approximal 850 miles north of Edmonton., [2] on the edge of the Arctic Circle [1] and therefore only accessible by small charter aircraft equipped with floats or skis, or larger charter aircraft flying to the south shore of the lake, followed by a boat journey. [2]
Radium, uranium and silver were extracted from the mine during several working periods between 1932 and 1982. Uranium from Eldorado was used in the Manhattan Project. The Eldorado Mine is also known as Port Radium, a name adopted for use at this specific site after 1942. The name Port Radium had previously referred to the post office and wireless radio station at Cameron Bay.
During a field trip along the east arm of Great Bear Lake in August 1900, James McIntosh Bell of the Geological Survey of Canada noted evidences of iron, copper, uranium and cobalt in the vicinity of Echo Bay. Thirty years later, on May 16, 1930, prospector Gilbert LaBine discovered high-grade pitchblende and silver at this site. His company was then known as Eldorado Gold Mines Limited (later renamed Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited). [3]
Eldorado started off as a radium mine in 1932, extracting radium from pitchblende. Radium ores were highly valued at the time because the price of radium salts, used in cancer treatment and then monopolized by Belgium, was US$70,000 per gram. The first concentration plant was a big erection at the site by Allis-Chalmers of Canada in 1933–1934, [4] with a radium refinery built at Port Hope, Ontario. Concentrates and cobbed material were shipped by barge and airplane to rail head at Fort McMurray, Alberta, then by train to Port Hope.
In 1940 the mine closed because of the expansion of European markets for radium. In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, ore from Eldorado had been used in the first chain reaction experiments, and as soon as the scientists had found out that these ores contained a rich store of uranium oxide and were useful as a source of nuclear energy. Gilbert LaBine's company was able to secure a contract with the United States military early in 1942. The Eldorado Mine at Port Radium was secretly expropriated and transferred to the Canadian Government in 1943-1944 and renamed Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited. Uranium ore from the mine was used in the atomic bomb developments of 1945. [5]
Uranium mining continued after World War II. The mine was expensive to operate and grade of the ore was declining, so new technology was brought in to make the isolated mine profitable. The discarded tailings were dredged from the bay when new machinery was installed to recover the uranium content.[ citation needed ] The underground workings were deepened and the crown corporation sought out additional deposits of uranium across Canada. But in 1960 the original Eldorado Mine was exhausted and closed.
In 1975 the Eldorado Mine was dewatered by Echo Bay Mines Limited to recover old silver and copper minerals. All activity ceased in 1982 and Eldorado Mine and the Port Radium settlement was burned and demolished.
In 1984 the site was decommissioned as per local standards at the time. [1]
In 2006 an agreement was made with the local Deline community about remediation activities, which were completed in 2007. [1]
On 31 December 2016, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission issued a 10-year license (therefore running until 31 December 2026) to Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada permitting long term monitoring and maintenance of the site. [1]
The mine is inspected by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission once every three years. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the 2020 inspection until February 2022. [1]
The Early Proterozoic Echo Bay Group consists of tuffs, flow rocks, argillite, quartzite, and dolomitic limestone. Uranium ore deposits occur within veins and stockworks which cut through this group, mainly along four parallel fault zones aligned roughly southwest–northeast from Great Bear Lake. The age of uranium mineralization is about 1,400 Ma. [6]
Uraninite, formerly pitchblende, is a radioactive, uranium-rich mineral and ore with a chemical composition that is largely UO2 but because of oxidation typically contains variable proportions of U3O8. Radioactive decay of the uranium causes the mineral to contain oxides of lead and trace amounts of helium. It may also contain thorium and rare-earth elements.
Great Bear Lake is a lake in the boreal forest of Canada. It is the largest lake entirely in Canada, the fourth-largest in North America, and the eighth-largest in the world by surface area. The lake is in the Northwest Territories, on the Arctic Circle between 65 and 67 degrees of northern latitude and between 118 and 123 degrees western longitude, 156 m (512 ft) above sea level.
Port Radium is a mining area on the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada. It included the settlement of Cameron Bay as well as the Eldorado and Echo Bay mines. The name Port Radium did not come into use until 1936 and at the time it was in reference to the region as a whole. The Eldorado mine site at LaBine Point adopted the name for its settlement in the 1940s and it has generally stuck.
Gilbert A. LaBine, was a Canadian prospector who, in 1930, discovered radium and uranium deposits at Port Radium, Northwest Territories. He has become known as the father of Canada's uranium industry. LaBine was president of Eldorado Gold Mines from its start in the late 1920s to 1947. He left the company, which had become a Crown corporation in 1944, to prospect for uranium minerals as an independent mine developer. In the 1950s he brought the Gunnar Mine to production at Uranium City, Saskatchewan.
Eldorado Resources was a Canadian mining company active between 1926 and 1988. The company was originally established by brothers Charles and Gilbert LaBine as a gold mining enterprise in 1926, but transitioned to focus on radium in the 1930s and uranium beginning in the 1940s. The company was nationalized into a Crown corporation in 1943 when the Canadian federal government purchased share control. Eldorado Resources was merged with the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation in 1988 and the resulting entity was privatized as Cameco Corporation. The remediation of some mining sites and low-level nuclear waste continue to be overseen by the Government of Canada through Canada Eldor Inc., a subsidiary of the Canada Development Investment Corporation.
Echo Bay Mines Limited was a Canadian company which was organized in 1964 by Northwest Explorers Limited to develop a silver deposit at Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada, which had been staked in 1930 by The Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company. The company leased the old Port Radium settlement from Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited and used the old camp and mill to recover silver and copper values from what became known as the Echo Bay Mine. Production in the Echo Bay workings ceased in 1975. The company then reopened the old Eldorado Mine workings and produced more silver and copper until 1981 when low silver prices closed the mine for good.
Uranium mining is the process of extraction of uranium ore from the ground. The worldwide production of uranium in 2019 amounted to 53,656 tonnes. Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia were the top three uranium producers, respectively, and together account for 68% of world production. Other countries producing more than 1,000 tonnes per year included Namibia, Niger, Russia, Uzbekistan, the United States, and China. Nearly all of the world's mined uranium is used to power nuclear power plants. Historically uranium was also used in applications such as uranium glass or ferrouranium but those applications have declined due to the radioactivity of uranium and are nowadays mostly supplied with a plentiful cheap supply of depleted uranium which is also used in uranium ammunition. In addition to being cheaper, depleted uranium is also less radioactive due to a lower content of short-lived 234
U and 235
U than natural uranium.
The Key Lake mine is a former uranium mine in Saskatchewan, Canada. It is 570 kilometres (350 mi) north of Saskatoon by air on the southern rim of the uranium-rich Athabasca Basin. Key Lake was initially developed to open-pit mine two nearby uranium ore deposits: the Gaertner deposit and the Deilmann deposit. Mining of this ore ceased in the late 1990s; the Key Lake mill now processes uranium ore from the McArthur River mine and from existing stockpiles on site. High-grade ore from McArthur river is blended with lower grade local rock before being passed through the mill. The mill has a permitted annual production capacity of 25 million pounds of U3O8. In addition, ammonium sulfate fertilizer is produced as a byproduct from used reagents. The pits of the mined out local deposits are being used as mill tailings management facilities.
Uranium mining in Colorado, United States, goes back to 1872, when pitchblende ore was taken from gold mines near Central City, Colorado. The Colorado uranium industry has seen booms and busts, but continues to this day. Not counting byproduct uranium from phosphate, Colorado is considered to have the third largest uranium reserves of any US state, behind Wyoming and New Mexico.
Madawaska Mine (previously known as Faraday Mine) is a decommissioned underground uranium mine in Faraday, near the town of Bancroft, Ontario, which produced 9 million pounds (4,082 tonnes) of U3O8 concentrate, at an average ore grade of 0.1074%, during its two periods of production.
Marine Transportation Services (MTS) formerly Northern Transportation Company Limited (NTCL) is a marine transportation company operating primarily in the Mackenzie River watershed of the Northwest Territories and northern Alberta, and the Arctic Ocean using a fleet of diesel tug boats and shallow-draft barges. NTCL filed for bankruptcy in 2016 and its assets were acquired by the Government of the Northwest Territories later that year.
SAG/SDAG Wismut was a uranium mining company in East Germany during the time of the cold war. It produced a total of 230,400 tonnes of uranium between 1947 and 1990 and made East Germany the fourth largest producer of uranium ore in the world at the time. It was the largest single producer of uranium ore in the entire sphere of control of the USSR. In 1991 after German reunification it was transformed into the Wismut GmbH company, owned by the Federal Republic of Germany, which is now responsible for the restoration and environmental cleanup of the former mining and milling areas. The head office of SDAG Wismut / Wismut GmbH is in Chemnitz-Siegmar.
Radioactive ores were first extracted in South Australia at Radium Hill in 1906 and Mount Painter in 1911. 2,000 tons of ore were treated to recover radium for medical use. Several hundred kilograms of uranium were also produced for use in ceramic glazes.
For many years, North America was the largest exporter of uranium ore in the world and has been a major world producer since demand for uranium developed. In 2009 Kazakhstan took over top spot, relegating Canada to second. 20% of the world's primary uranium production came from mines in Canada in 2009. 14.5% of the world production came from one mine, McArthur River. Currently the only producing area in Canada is northern Saskatchewan, although other areas have had active mines in the past.
The Gunnar Mine was a uranium mine in northern Saskatchewan, Canada located around 25 kilometres (16 mi) southwest of the community of Uranium City, and approximately 600 km north of Saskatoon. The mine was situated on the Crackingstone Peninsula on the north shore of Lake Athabasca in the Beaverlodge Uranium District.
The Beaverlodge Mine sometimes referred to as the Eldorado Mine or the Beaverlodge Operation was a uranium mine in the community of Eldorado, northern Saskatchewan, Canada. Eldorado was a small community 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) east of the community of Uranium City, Saskatchewan in the Beaverlodge Uranium District built by Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited to house the workforce and families of the mine.
The world's largest producer of uranium is Kazakhstan, which in 2019 produced 43% of the world's mining output. Canada was the next largest producer with a 13% share, followed by Australia with 12%. Uranium has been mined in every continent except Antarctica.
Dyno Mine is a decommissioned underground uranium mine located at Cardiff, near Farrel Lake, approximately 30km southwest of Bancroft, Ontario. It operated from 1958 to 1960.
Uranium mining in Bancroft represents one of two major uranium-producing areas in Ontario, and one of seven in Canada, all located along the edge of the Canadian Shield. In the context of mining, the "Bancroft area" includes Haliburton, Hastings, and Renfrew counties, and all areas between Minden and Lake Clear.
Uranium mining in the Elliot Lake area represents one of two major uranium-producing areas in Ontario, and one of seven in Canada.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)