
The mine that built the atomic bomb - Thevet
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200803-the-forgotten-mine-that-built-the-atomic-bomb
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runeb
I’m surprised at the amount of Uranium the US needed (for just the Manhattan
project?)

 _the US secured 1,200 tonnes of Congolese uranium, which was stockpiled on
Staten Island, US, and an additional 3,000 tonnes that was stored above ground
at the mine in Shinkolobwe. But it was not enough. US Army engineers were
dispatched to drain the mine, which had fallen into disuse, and bring it back
into production.

Under Belgian rule, Congolese workers toiled day and night in the open pit,
sending hundreds of tonnes of uranium ore to the US every month._

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martincmartin
They also wanted to keep it from the Germans. Before war, much of the
foundations of atomic physics were developed by people in the Axis countries.
It was plausible that Germany had a nuclear program as big as the American
one. Denying them fuel was important.

See the sabotage of Norwegian heavy water:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage)

~~~
sandworm101
>> It was plausible that Germany had a nuclear program as big as the American
one.

Plausible only for those without knowledge of the extent of the US program.
Even among those involved, few had perspective on exactly how much of the US
economy was being funnelled into the nuclear program. The Manhattan Project
famously at some points used roughly 10% of the electricity available _in the
united states_ , a country with an infrastructure relatively untouched by war.
There is absolutely no way that WWII Germany could have sustained anything
close to a similar effort. They had to brains to understand the physics, but
not the raw industrial power necessary to turn that into a practical weapon.

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cryptonector
The Manhattan project studied four different Uranium enrichment solutions
(none of being centrifuges'; ultimately settled on diffusion) and pursued two
completely different bomb designs. The uranium bomb required a high degree of
enrichment, while the plutonium bomb required a reactor. I don't have the
figures, but I imagine a great deal of the electric power consumed by the
Manhattan project was for making heavy water and enriching uranium.

The Japanese had two different atomic bomb projects, as usual, one for the
navy and one for the army. As I understand it, one of the (the navy's) got
pretty close. But details of the Japanese effort are hard to find.

A much more focused project that consumed a smaller portion of Europe's
industrial capacity was somewhat plausible, at least up until the scuttling of
Norway's heavy water. A serious German bomb effort could have done the minimum
uranium enrichment (using centrifuges, perhaps) needed to breed plutonium in a
reactor, and then yielded plutonium bombs, at much lower cost than the
Manhattan project. Necessity being the mother of invention, and with all the
energetic and industrial constraints they had it's not too farfetched to
suppose they would have landed an idea like that. Still, once they lost access
to Norway's heavy water, it would have cost them a great deal of electric
power to make more, so there's that.

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rurban
The Russians didn't need the Congo uranium, because they had the East-German
Czech uranium from the Erzgebirge (Wismut) in equal quantities. Also very
secret those times.

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missedthecue
I believe the majority of uranium comes from Kazakh mines, a former Soviet
state.

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rurban
East-Asian uranium (Kazhak) could have indeed provided the majority of the
USSR uranium needs, with 60% stocks. But in reality the GDR (Wismut) did
provide 60% of the USSR uranium and the CSSR (Jachynow, Pribram) 14%. The
German output was 5x higher than the Russian output in their mines. Only after
the German uranium support stopped, they ramped up Kazakhstan, which is now
leading the world production by factor 4 over everyone else.

Source: Urangeheimnisse, Rainer Karlsch, Zbynek Zeman, 2002

BTW: the death rate by lung cancer was about 100x higher there than in
Hiroshima/Nagasaki in absolute numbers. In relative numbers Colorado/USA was
the worst btw.

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growlist
Not a single picture of the mine or general area of its location?

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ivann
Weirdly there is a picture and 7 reviews (4.7 stars) for the mine on google
map.

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shinkolobwe/@-11.045198,26...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shinkolobwe/@-11.045198,26.5541917,4599m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m8!1m2!3m1!2sShinkolobwe!3m4!1s0x19712444dae3f85f:0x6b49fc032f5c5cf2!8m2!3d-11.0506909!4d26.5482903)

