George Laurence of the National Research Council (NRC) in Ottawa was one of the first researchers in the world to investigate the possibility of using a combination of carbon and uranium to create a sustained nuclear chain reaction. In 1941-1942, with the assistance of Bernie Sargent of Queen’s University, he put together an assembly consisting of bags of coke and uranium slugs. Unfortunately, the purity of the ad-hoc materials that were available to him at that time did not lead to success, although he did detect neutron multiplication – an indication that his method showed promise with higher-purity materials.
That success was achieved several months later when, on December 2, 1942, a group led by Enrico Fermi, using a much larger assembly of carbon (this time in the form of high-purity graphite blocks) and uranium metal slugs, were able to achieve the world’s first sustained chain reaction in the CP-1 reactor in Chicago.
The use of graphite as a reflector of neutrons was incorporated in the first heavy-water reactor in the world, CP-3, which went critical in Chicago in May 15, 1944. The Zero Energy Experimental Pile (ZEEP) reactor, the world’s second heavy-water reactor and Canada’s first, was modelled on CP-3 and first went into operation September 5, 1945.
The Canadian Nuclear Heritage Museum (CNHM) has among it’s more than 650 artifacts several small segments of graphite from CP-1 and three large (40 kg), rectangular blocks of graphite from the ZEEP reactor.
One of the questions we have not been able to find the definitive answer to is where the source of the large quantity of high-quality graphite needed for ZEEP was located. The secrecy surrounding all efforts during that time period make finding the “purchase orders” very difficult.
Wilfrid Eggleston was given access to many restricted documents when he wrote his book “Canada’s Nuclear Story” and on page 169 he tells us that the graphite type was AGX and that it came from Welland, ON. Based on this information, it is almost certain that the source was the huge, Welland-based, Electromet facility that produced AGX graphite for many years, primarily for industrial electric furnaces used in the smelter anodes.
The market for graphite slowed during the 1990s and the aging Welland facility, by then a division of Union Carbide, was shut down in 1999 and abandoned. The site was turned into “brownfields” with industrial rubble piled over the unwanted-inventory of new and damaged graphite.
In 2016, a Welland company, King and Benton, purchased the property with the intent of reclaiming the land. They discovered the huge deposit (estimated at up to 500,000 tonnes) of graphite that is very much in demand by the electric car industry. The current value of high-quality graphite is typically $14 000/tonne and claims as to the value of the inventory run as high as $7 billion.
Estimates of the value of “mining” deposits are often inflated but reducing the claim by even a factor of twenty, to $350 million, still makes their discovery a fantastic windfall. In addition, the company claims production of its graphite is a “green” industry. The graphite is already in a state that is ready to use without further manufacturing needed.
To see the graphite at the CNHM and even slightly blackening your fingers on ZEEP history, contact any Board member of the Society for the Preservation of Canada’s Nuclear Heritage Inc. or send an email to info@nuclearheritage.com.
