Tube Alloys/Manhattan Project

As we are in 1942, this topic will be coming up in a few months. Even today there are still things not well understood about this effort. Some were downplayed as a result of changing postwar politics. I hope they will be discussed in the episodes.

  1. The Allied nature of the effort, especially at the beginning. Tube Alloys was the British counterpart to the Manhattan Project, but it didn’t have as many resources and the Americans stopped cooperating with it.

  2. The dual sources of uranium ore. The plan to use the existing uranium mine at Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories in Canada and the subsequent discovery of ore from Shinkolobwe, Belgian Congo.

Personally I feel they were planned in tandem as a hedge against each other and to obfusticate the origin of the ore, for military and moral reasons.

  1. The processing of all ore at Eldorado Nuclear Ltd. In Port Hope, ON Canada. The initial contract was signed in July 1942.

  2. The heavy water plant at Trail, BC. This was the only such plant in Allied hands until 1943. The other one was in Norway.

Of course there are other points, but I don’t want to spoil them and so I am concentrating on 1942 events.

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