ARCTIC RADIUM

Thames Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 20188, 13 December 1937, Page 3

ARCTIC RADIUM

REMARKABLE NEW MINE REDUCED THE WORLD PRICE A big supply of radium concentrates from the remarkable new mine on the edge of the Arctic Circle in Canada, whose production has brought the price of radium down from £15,000 to £SOOO a gramme, is now on its way to Ontario for refining. Some of this is destined for hospitals in Britain. The Radium Commission in its last report stated that a further 20 grammes of radium were essential to Great Britain if research work and treatment were to be continued on their present basis. Some of this supply has already been received. Two stream-lined steamers, designed specially to withstand the sub-Arctic waters, are bringing the radium down the Mackenzie River from Echo Bay to Waterways. This is a distance of 1500 miles, much of which is uncharted. From Waterways the cargo, which is packed in sealed sacks, will be transferred to a fleet of aeroplanes and flown to the refinery at Port Hope, Ontario. The mine from which the supply comes is on the shores of the Great Bear Lake, 1500 miles from the end of the railway. It is worked by an engine supplied by oil which comes eight and a half miles from Fort Norman through a pipe so constructed as to overcome the difficulties of the Great Bear River rapids. There are 105 miners. In the summer they have two and a half months’ continuous daylight; in the winter they do not see the sun for six weeks. Yet they live and work in comparative comfort and in radio touch with the world.

At the beginning of this year Canadian Government officials at a banquet at Ottawa celebrated the production of the first ounce—2B grammes—of Canadian radium, and ate caribou steak brought by aeroplane from the far north.