[HN Gopher] Mine in the Northwest Territories provided uranium t...
___________________________________________________________________
Mine in the Northwest Territories provided uranium to Manhattan
Project (2011)
Author : akakievich
Score : 55 points
Date : 2023-08-14 21:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (maisonneuve.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (maisonneuve.org)
| mandevil wrote:
| Based on my notes from reading The New World: Volume 1, 1939-1946
| by Hewlett and Anderson, approximately 1/6th of the Uranium used
| for the Manhattan Project came from Canada, 1/7th from the US,
| and the rest came from the Belgian Congo (most of that was
| actually shipped across the Atlantic before the US entered the
| war- it was stored on Staten Island for safekeeping before US
| entry and the creation of the Manhattan Project). I don't know
| much about the US uranium, but I do know that the Belgian Congo
| uranium mining was also done under a racist colonial system that
| exploited the locals and gave them inadequate protection or
| understanding of the risks they were taking. Postwar US Uranium
| mines in Arizona and Utah also used Dine (Navajo) and other
| native peoples with similar levels of racism, exploitation,
| leaving thousands of people sick etc.
|
| There are surprisingly strong parallels to the current 'Race for
| Lithium' and 'Race for Rare Earths'- hard-rock mining is a
| terrible business all the way around.
| version_five wrote:
| Does this have something to do with the article? It reads like
| a random "mining is racist" rant which has set off some
| fighting.
| [deleted]
| mandevil wrote:
| Mining isn't racist necessarily, but it is definitely done by
| exploiting people, and in ways that line up with the power
| structure at that place and time.
|
| My wife did her (pharmacy) residency at a hospital in West
| Virginia, which is both incredibly poor, exploited heavily
| for coal mining (until the recent fracking boom surge in
| natural gas killed it), and very white. She definitely spent
| a lot of her time treating black lung and other mining
| diseases that didn't involve mining for uranium.
|
| Mining exploits the land, it exploits the people who do it,
| and our civilization is built on it and absolutely requires
| enormous quantities of it. I don't have a larger point, just
| that I try to live with it.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| So does a community that allows a mining operation to
| "exploit" it have any say in the matter? Is it possible
| that the operating brings new jobs to the community that
| wouldn't have existed otherwise?
| mandevil wrote:
| Complex question, one of personal morality and judgement,
| the sort of thing that everyone has to answer for
| themselves.
|
| For myself, the concerns I have are about consent: how
| well are the risks explained to and understood by all
| parties involved, and what happens if one of the parties
| says no (especially the less powerful group). It should
| in theory be possible to mostly resolve those issues with
| consent, though in practice, even among adults it seems
| we have trouble with it, as the original article makes
| clear.
|
| There are some philosophers who point out that a lot of
| the suffering from these sorts of trade-offs are actually
| felt by people who aren't even born yet- those who grow
| up amid the dust and debris, those exposed in utero, etc.
| which raises all sorts of even more difficult questions
| about consent.
|
| Again, I have no answer for this, but I think it is good
| practice for humans to at least regularly think about
| these sorts of moral trade-offs being made by our
| civilization, because we each have our own point where we
| have to be the one who walks away from Omelas.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| The subtitle of the article is "A mine in the Northwest
| Territories provided much of the uranium used during the
| Manhattan Project--unbeknownst to the indigenous people who
| worked there." So broader commentary on uranium mining in
| other places using indigenous peoples is relevant and using
| history to compare to modern day is relevant.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| > Postwar US Uranium mines in Arizona and Utah also used Dine
| (Navajo) and other native peoples with similar levels of
| racism, exploitation, leaving thousands of people sick etc.
|
| Not exactly just exploiting minorities. My grandpa died because
| he mined Uranium post-war, but he was white and afaik so was
| everyone he worked with.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >Not exactly just exploiting minorities.
|
| They didn't say "just" or "only" minorities. However, most of
| the mines were located on or near, Navajo land and over 4
| million tons of ore came for that land. The workers were
| disproportionately Navajo and the land is now poisoned with
| radioactive waste from the mining, with cancer rates doubling
| from the 1970s to the 1990s. Land the Navajo were forced
| onto. Recognizing the damage this has done to an already
| persecuted minority population does not negate damage done to
| individuals of other races or ethnicities.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2016/04/10/4735472...
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222290/
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Only one worth mentioning though apparently
| EarthIsHome wrote:
| Shinkolobwe Mine in the Belgian Congo [0].
|
| > This secrecy was maintained long after the end of the war.
| "Efforts were made to give the message that the uranium came
| from Canada, as a way of deflecting attention away from the
| Congo..."
|
| > 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.
|
| [0]: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200803-the-forgotten-
| mi...
| truthtold wrote:
| [flagged]
| truthtold wrote:
| [flagged]
| juujian wrote:
| If colonial Congo isn't a good example of racism, then I
| don't know what is. Here is an idyllic postcard for the
| Belgians back home to show how colonial rule is going: https:
| //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Congo#/media/File:Muti...
| truthtold wrote:
| if you want to feel good online calling others racist, go
| ahead, you are free, go get those juicy internet points
|
| this is totally unrelated to the article, just goes on to
| show your motivations
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Bro you seem personally attacked. Do you feel personally
| attacked by an open discussion of the realities of race
| and racism in the 20th century?
| twaway735 wrote:
| I feel disgust for people who go around calling others
| racist
|
| Its a sort of religion, and there's the fanatics who
| accuse others of heresy.
|
| I'd feel the same disgust for ISIS activists
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Can you show me where in the comment some one called
| someone else racist?
|
| Otherwise, it seems like you are projecting yourself onto
| the Belgium Congo being identified as racist, which is
| just like a "Well yeah duh" level of racism. It seems
| like you are angry that the Belgium Congo was identified
| as a racist enterprise, which even by their own accounts
| is objectively true. So do you self identify with the
| Belgium Congo?
| juujian wrote:
| I mean, I will go on record and say that Leopold II was a
| racist based on what he did in Congo. I'm comfortable
| doing that. And while we're at it, Roosevelt was racist
| for putting all Japanese-Americans into camps. Btw, did
| you know that Belgium and the US fought Hitler and Tojo,
| who were also racist? I know all very controversial
| stuff. Man, I'm enjoying calling people out for racism on
| the internet and I feel so good about myself right now.
| mecsred wrote:
| The very first thing in the article is a description of
| the exploitation of native populations in uranium mining.
| It couldn't be more on topic.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The risks around radioactive materials were very poorly
| understood at the time, and were largely learned by lethal
| trial and error.
|
| The Manhattan Project was done to end a war killing tens of
| thousands of people a day, which I think can defend some grim
| tradeoffs.
|
| I won't claim all workers were well treated, but many
| scientists were also killed and injured in this learning
| process.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| More importantly than that, where is the intent that proves
| racism? Any bad outcome for a minority does not mean there
| was racism.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| There was an obscure TV series called "An American in Canada."
| Just imagine the rich comedic situations /s
|
| anyhow, at one point a Canadian threatens the American that he's
| going to "go all War of 1812 on your ass."
| scrubs wrote:
| Lived in the nwt for many years as a kid. Highlights? A lot:
|
| - good schools. I miss Ms. Carter
|
| - travel extensively through Yukon
|
| - great shape: shoveled a lot of snow and frozen Canadian ice
| cream. Lots of cross country skiing
|
| - maple walnut icecream is awesome. Hard to find in the usa
|
| - had a decent fossil collection for a while
|
| - got into a lot of trouble (having fun). Still know k-6
| principal name (Ms. Wind and her paddle. She might remember me
| too).
|
| - awesome/epic snowball fights. I should have pitched for the
| Yankees
|
| - appreciation for beauty of land nature
|
| - caught my first fish in the keele River. Smoked it
|
| - cold nights makes well read kids
|
| - a piece of sputnik fell to earth not too far from us
|
| - as ref almost all Canadians live very close to us border. The
| nwt capital (yellowknife) is on great slave lake about 40 degree
| north. You live there because you are a native, geologist,
| government worker. Named after local tribe
|
| - great bear lake is one lake up from great slave
|
| - Unofficial national dessert? Strawberry short cake or rhubarb
| pie.
| mc32 wrote:
| Hopefully it didn't follow the Princeton tradition of lacing
| the balls with rocks :
| http://www.universitypressclub.com/archive/2014/02/tbt-epic-...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > - maple walnut icecream is awesome. Hard to find in the usa
|
| It's fairly findable in the Northeast (as is maple walnut
| fudge). The best maple walnut ice cream I've ever had was at a
| place called Brickley's[1] in Rhode Island.
|
| 1: https://www.brickleys.com/
| pdonis wrote:
| _> The nwt capital (yellowknife) is on great slave lake about
| 40 degree north_
|
| I think you mean about 62 degrees north latitude?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I suspect they looked up the latitude for the Great _Salt_
| lake instead, which is around 41N or ~40N if you 're rounding
| down to SLC.
| opticfluorine wrote:
| Is maple walnut ice cream not a thing across the US? I grew up
| in New England not far from the Canadian border, now live in
| upstate NY and have easy access to maple walnut ice cream.
| Never realized how lucky I was.
| also23throwaway wrote:
| Don't live in the northeast, and this is the first time I'm
| hearing about the existence of maple walnut ice cream.
| cgeier wrote:
| I had to look this up: the Northwest Territories are a part of
| Canada. It's only mentioned about half way through the article.
| palijer wrote:
| As a Canadian, this is how I feel whenever folks are talking
| about US states other than like, Texas or New York.
|
| It's interesting being in Europe or somewhere and having a
| bunch of travelers introduce themselves, I've always noticed
| that most people will say what country their from, Italy,
| France, Canada etc, but Americans always just use their state.
| version_five wrote:
| States are more autonomous than provinces (although closer)
| or regions in many european countries. My in-laws live in
| France but we'd rarely talk about the Departement they live
| in, it's the city that's mentioned.
|
| Saying your state is imo closer to saying your European
| country instead of saying Europe.
|
| Additionally, culture and education being what they are, most
| adults in western countries have heard of all the states,
| moreso than some of their principal cities, so it's not that
| odd to mention it.
| ipaddr wrote:
| People go with big cities usually. Some people like Nevada
| but most will still say Vegas. People say they are from
| Philadelphia rather than the state. Chicago is used more
| often. Buffalo over New York. New Jersey, Rhode Island seem
| to be used more than a city. Boston over the state but in
| Cambridge they use the city and state. Texas is more common
| than Austin unless you are in the states. Florida could go
| both ways and be more regional South Beach, Miami, Ft
| Lauderdale vs from Florida.
|
| Interesting topic. In Europe it seems by country. From France
| vs from Paris
| wongarsu wrote:
| In Europe the answer depends on who you're talking with.
|
| For example if you're in a German train and ask someone
| where they're from, they might say they are from Swabia (a
| linguistic region similar but not identical to the state of
| Baden-Wurttemberg). If you had asked them in a Swabian
| accent, they would have instead answered with the specific
| city, e.g. Limburg. If you ask the same person in English
| while he's on vacation in Paris, he'll say he's from
| Germany.
|
| What people actually identify with most strongly depends
| heavily on the region; in large cities it's often the city
| or metropolitan area, but elsewhere it's not uncommon to
| associate with linguistic regions, kingdoms that stopped
| existing centuries ago, or your state or administrative
| district (particularly when it coincides with one of the
| previous points).
| lincon127 wrote:
| Cool.
|
| Also what, Ehtseo Ayah didn't see a great mushroom in the
| distance? That's pretty disappointing
| kotaKat wrote:
| The Canadian government once again finding ways to kill off the
| Indigenous, this time by proxy of hazardous working conditions
| left unannounced to the workers is far from "cool", especially
| to further an American mission to kill as many people as they
| could in Japan.
|
| It's, quite frankly, fucking disgusting to learn even more
| about what happened to my ancestors as a member of an
| indigenous Canadian band myself helping carry on their
| tradition and legacy.
| glompers wrote:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-history-okinawa-
| idU...
|
| I believe a parallel debate among historians is whether mass
| Japanese civilian suicides near battle zones were under
| Japanese military orders or were merely voluntary. You can be
| sure the Allied invasion of the home islands would have been
| desirable for such coerced self killing -- which the Allies
| tried to prevent -- if it had been the mission to kill as
| many Japanese people as possible.
|
| What is AFAIK not debated is that Japanese who did surrender,
| instead of heading for the suicide cliffs in places like
| Okinawa (I don't know about Saipan), were often murdered from
| a distance by the Japanese soldiers who wanted everyone to
| head for the suicide cliffs. It possibly deterred other
| Japanese who were thinking of surrender. Unfortunately I
| think that your justified indignation actually overestimates
| human righteousness and justification, both theirs and ours
| and our own future descendants'. I think justification is
| needed and justice/hope is too but it won't come from the
| likes of us.
| wk_end wrote:
| I have no defence for the Canadian government's treatment of
| Indigenous people - either in this case or in a thousand
| others - but describing the Manhattan Project as "an American
| mission to kill as many people as they could in Japan" is
| really, really facile.
|
| For most of the war, the primary concern of the Manhattan
| Project was to counter Nazi Germany's attempt to build
| something similar, which had started beforehand. I don't know
| whether the US handled the bomb responsibly, but I know that
| the Nazis definitely wouldn't have. Given that history, as a
| Jew I find it almost offensive to deny the virtue of a
| mission to keep Hitler from having nuclear weapons unchecked.
|
| Even once Germany surrendered, the goal of the bombing was to
| force an end to the war quickly instead of executing a
| protracted land invasion of the Japanese Home Islands - which
| probably would have killed more people (Japanese and
| American) than the bomb did. There were various ways the US
| probably could have caused fewer civilian casualties; but
| they also made several decisions that massively limited the
| amount of death - for instance, instead of picking relatively
| small military targets and staggering their delivery, they
| could've just dropped their three available bombs in one go
| on Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya and called it a day.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> the goal of the bombing was to force an end to the war
| quickly instead of executing a protracted land invasion of
| the Japanese Home Islands - which probably would have
| killed more people (Japanese and American) than the bomb
| did_
|
| While this was the rationale that was published after the
| war by the US government, current historical scholarship
| indicates that it was a lot more complicated than that. To
| give just a few key points:
|
| Actual casualty estimates made by the US military in the
| spring and summer of 1945 for a land invasion of Japan were
| much smaller than figures quoted (without any specific
| sourcing given) in rationales published after the war. The
| latter figures were in the range of a half million to a
| million casualties, but the former figures were more like
| tens of thousands.
|
| While it was certainly a goal of the Truman Administration
| to end the war quickly, if at all possible before the
| Soviet Union attacked Japan, dropping the atomic bombs was
| far from the only feasible option for doing that. In
| particular, there were plenty of indications (including
| intercepted Japanese diplomatic messages, since the US had
| broken the Japanese diplomatic code years before and was
| routinely reading all such traffic) that clarifying exactly
| what "unconditional surrender" meant, and in particular
| what the status of the Japanese Emperor would be, would
| have given the peace party within the Japanese government
| enough leverage to force a surrender sooner.
|
| There is also plenty of evidence that at the very least
| Truman and his Secretary of State, James Byrnes, wanted to
| drop the atomic bombs in order to make the Soviet Union
| more tractable diplomatically and to reverse the much more
| conciliatory policy towards them that FDR had taken.
|
| And finally, the internal deliberations of the Japanese
| government (which were not available to historians until
| some decades after the war) show that the impact of the
| Soviet Union invading Manchuria was much greater than the
| impact of the atomic bombs in pushing the issue for
| surrender. The Japanese weren't even sure at first what the
| atomic bombs were, and in any case the US had been
| firebombing Japanese cities for months so additional
| bombing was not a huge shock. The Soviets, however, had
| been stringing Japan along for more than a year at that
| point, holding out some hope that Japan might be able to
| get a negotiated peace brokered through the Soviet Union.
| In fact Stalin never had any such intention; he just wanted
| to make sure the Japanese didn't surrender until he had a
| chance to enter the war against them. But Japanese leaders
| didn't understand that until they were forced to realize it
| by the Soviet invasion of Manchuria (the same morning that
| the Nagasaki bomb was dropped).
|
| Two good detailed references are _The Decision to Use the
| Atomic Bomb_ by Gar Alperovitz and _Racing the Enemy_ by
| Tsuyoshi Hasegawa.
|
| _> they also made several decisions that massively limited
| the amount of death - for instance, instead of picking
| relatively small military targets and staggering their
| delivery, they could 've just dropped their three available
| bombs in one go on Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya and called it a
| day_
|
| The reason those cities were not targeted by atomic bombs
| had nothing to do with trying to limit deaths; they were
| not targeted because they had already been destroyed by
| firebombing in the months before the atomic bombs were
| ready, causing more deaths than the atomic bombs caused.
| wk_end wrote:
| Thanks for the pointers...I'm not interested in defending
| American Jingoism by any means, and am very interested in
| learning more about the decision to drop the bomb.
|
| That said, I do want to dispute this:
|
| > The reason those cities were not targeted by atomic
| bombs had nothing to do with trying to limit deaths; they
| were not targeted because they had already been destroyed
| by firebombing in the months before the atomic bombs were
| ready, causing more deaths than the atomic bombs caused.
|
| It's an exaggeration to say that they were "destroyed".
| Yes, ~100,000 died in the firebombings of Tokyo...but
| even by the end of the war the population was still well
| over 3 million, 10x the size of Hiroshima. Whatever the
| "true" motivation, the selection of Hiroshima and
| Nagasaki was entirely coherent with the claimed strategy
| that was focused on destroying the Japanese capability to
| make war, rather than to commit indiscriminate genocide
| as claimed.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> It 's an exaggeration to say that they were
| "destroyed"._
|
| You could say the same about Hiroshima and Nagasaki if
| you want to be sufficiently particular. But if you look
| at pictures of Tokyo, for example, after the firebombing
| raids, and pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the
| atomic bombs were dropped, they look pretty similar.
|
| _> even by the end of the war the population was still
| well over 3 million, 10x the size of Hiroshima_
|
| And before the war Tokyo's population was about 7
| million, perhaps 20x the size of Hiroshima.
|
| _> the selection of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was entirely
| coherent with the claimed strategy that was focused on
| destroying the Japanese capability to make war, rather
| than to commit indiscriminate genocide as claimed_
|
| I agree that "indiscriminate genocide" was not a
| motivation (and no serious historian that I'm aware of
| claims that it was).
|
| However, "destroying the Japanese capability to make war"
| is also something of a misstatement regarding the
| selection of atomic bomb targets. That is another aspect
| of the rationale given by the US government after the war
| that has been called into question by more recent
| historical scholarship. There were high officials in the
| Truman administration that advocated for using the bombs
| first on a purely military installation, like a naval
| base, or for a demonstration on some uninhabited island
| first (with Japanese observers invited). However, those
| officials had no real voice in the actual target
| selection. The main factors in the target selection were
| that it be a city with some military capability (and none
| of the cities chosen as potential targets had very much--
| because, as I have said, by that point in the war there
| wasn't much warmaking capability _anywhere_ in Japan),
| such as a factory, but with significant civilian
| population surrounding it (such as factory workers '
| homes), and that the targeting point be chosen to
| maximize the effects of the bomb in order to make them
| clear to the Japanese.
|
| Another factor that needs to be considered when talking
| about removing Japan's warmaking capability is that, by
| the end of 1944, the US Navy had Japan completely
| blockaded; _no_ ships could get in or out. The Japanese
| Navy was destroyed and Japan had no prospect of getting
| any additional resources from anywhere (and Japan itself
| has very few natural resources at all--that 's why the
| Japanese were so insistent upon expanding their control
| of Asia prior to WW II). That fact alone meant that
| erosion of the Japanese warmaking capability was only a
| matter of time. Factories are pointless without raw
| materials, and guns and tanks and planes are pointless
| without fuel and ammunition. Indeed, at least one
| internal US military study found that the blockade all by
| itself might have caused the Japanese to surrender
| eventually, without either any atomic bombs or any
| invasion.
| version_five wrote:
| This is inaccurate, revisionist and offensive to most
| Canadians, and has no place in this kind of forum.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Not only was the mine primarily staffed by "whites", uranium
| ore has negligible health risks.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| I read through the linked article. I didn't find anything
| specific about the ratio of First Nation to white workers
| in the mines.
|
| According to this article, it was mostly First Nation
| workers in the ore mines.
| https://ejatlas.org/conflict/mining-and-transportation-of-
| ur...
|
| Here's another article about the workers in the ore mines.
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/natives-worked-unprotected-
| in...
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >Uranium mining has widespread effects, contaminating the
| environment with radioactive dust, radon gas, water-borne
| toxins, and increased levels of background
| radiation...Uranium is an a-particle emitter, as are many
| of its radioactive decay products, including radon.
| a-Particles are bulky (2 protons and 2 neutrons) and cannot
| penetrate human skin. However, when particulate matter
| containing a-emitters is inhaled or ingested, it results in
| internal exposure to radiation. _The carcinogenicity of
| inhaled a-emitters is not in dispute._ Radon gas is
| responsible for up to 20% of cases of lung cancer in
| Canada.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3653646/
| fsh wrote:
| Breathing in dust from uranium ore, or its decay product
| Radon is very much a health risk:
| https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-waste-uranium-
| mining...
| nukeman wrote:
| A lump of raw ore on a shelf in your home office? Sure.
|
| Uranium ore in ton quantities, underground in a poorly
| ventilated mine? That's a big health risk, due to radon,
| other daughter products, and the inherent heavy metal
| hazards of uranium.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Being from the US, I've noticed several times where a Canadian
| has popped up and said something similar to a boast that
| Canadians helped with something that is primarily an American
| thing. It always ways feels like the little brother chiming in
| "but I helped too!" I find it very endearing. Kind of a Wally and
| Beaver moment.
| bmitc wrote:
| > helped with something that is primarily an American thing
|
| To be clear though, a huge amount of the key players were
| foreign scientists or foreign educated, such as Oppenheimer
| himself. We need to keep this in mind because although the U.S.
| helped pull all this together, we couldn't have done it without
| the foreign help we received. This is important in today's
| climate that gets more and more nationalistic by the day.
| Germany effectively gave the allies the win because they pushed
| out good people. The U.S. must keep this in mind.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| Perhaps a dumb question but why isn't mining highly robotized? As
| a layperson, it seems like it would lend itself well to remotely
| controlled heavy machinery.
| hedora wrote:
| Mining is highly robotized. Here's a How It's Made video about
| mining uranium in Canada:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x7DozCqLxU
|
| Other types of mines are less robotized, since they only have
| to worry about inhalation hazards, and not radioactivity.
| However, in most other types of mines, machines still do most
| of the drilling, lifting, detonation of explosives, and so on.
|
| The biggest hazard in a modern mine is probably the
| accumulation of dust in enclosed spaces. I'd guess injuries
| during machine maintenance and repair come second, and cave-ins
| are a distant third. (I'm speculating though; I don't have data
| to back that up.)
| failuser wrote:
| The heavy machinery work until it does not. Someone needs to
| come down there and unjam it, replace the broken parts, so the
| maintainance and so on. It's highly mechanized, but there are
| people who still need to keep it going.
| Avicebron wrote:
| I don't have an answer for mining specifically, but having
| worked in robotics in the past, I'd probably guess it's just
| fundamentally cheaper to pay very poor people to do it vs
| developing and maintaining new technologies. Unfortunately,
| because I could see the benefit to robotic mining technologies,
| heck maybe if we ever figure out how to feasibly mine asteroids
| or something they will get some funding.
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