Montreal Laboratory

The MAUD Committee was uncertain whether this was relevant to the main task of Tube Alloys, that of building an atomic bomb, although there remained a possibility that a reactor could be used to breed plutonium, which might be used in one.

The Canadian government agreed to the proposal, and the Montreal Laboratory was established in a house belonging to McGill University; it moved to permanent accommodation at the Université de Montréal in March 1943.

These were Bertrand Goldschmidt and Pierre Auger from France, George Placzek from Czechoslovakia, S. G. Bauer from Switzerland, Friedrich Paneth and Hans von Halban from Austria, and R. E. Newell and F. R. Jackson from Britain.

Canada has a long history of involvement with nuclear research, dating back to the pioneering work of Ernest Rutherford at McGill University in 1899.

For that purpose, he obtained 450 kilograms (990 lb) of uranium dioxide in paper bags from the Eldorado Mine at Port Radium in the Northwest Territories.

[2] The experiments continued in 1942, but were ultimately unsuccessful; the problems posed by impurities in the coke and uranium oxide had not been fully appreciated, and as a result too many neutrons were captured.

[2] A team of scientists in France that included Hans von Halban, Lew Kowarski, and Francis Perrin had been conducting similar experiments since 1939.

By 1940, they had decided to use heavy water as a moderator, and through the French Minister of Armaments obtained about 185 kilograms (408 lb) from the Norsk Hydro hydroelectric station at Vemork in Norway.

They were temporarily installed in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge but, believing that Britain would soon fall as well, were eager to relocate to the United States or Canada.

This was followed on 23 July by a letter from Hugh Taylor, a British-born scientist working at Princeton University, on behalf of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD).

There might be no post-war demand for heavy water, and the patent on the process was held by Albert Edgar Knowles, so a profit-sharing agreement would be required.

[9][10] There the matter rested until 6 December, when Blaylock had a meeting with the British physicist G. I. Higson, who informed him that Taylor had become discouraged with Cominco, and had decided to find another source of heavy water.

Blaylock agreed to produce heavy water at Trail, and quickly secured approval from the chairman of the board, Sir Edward Beatty.

[9] The French scientists made good progress on the design of an aqueous homogeneous reactor, but there were doubts that their work was relevant to the main task of the British Tube Alloys project, that of building an atomic bomb, and resources were tightly controlled in wartime Britain.

On the other hand, American officials had concerns about security, since only one of the six senior scientists in the Cambridge group was British, and about French patent claims.

The Lord President, Sir John Anderson, as the minister responsible for Tube Alloys, wrote to the British High Commissioner to Canada, Malcolm MacDonald, who had been involved in Tube Alloys negotiations with Canada regarding Eldorado's uranium mine at Port Radium and its refinery in Port Hope, Ontario.

[15] On 19 February 1942, MacDonald, Thomson and Wallace Akers, the director of Tube Alloys, met with C. J. Mackenzie, the president of the NRC, who enthusiastically supported the proposal.

[2] Howe cabled Anderson expressing the Canadian government's agreement in principle, but requesting a more detailed appraisal of the cost of the proposed laboratory.

These were Goldschmidt and Pierre Auger from France, George Placzek from Czechoslovakia, S. G. Bauer from Switzerland, Friedrich Paneth and Halban from Austria, and R. E. Newell and F. R. Jackson from Britain.

At this point, many other scientists said that they would not go without Kowarski, but Sir Edward Appleton, the permanent secretary of the British Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, of which the Tube Alloys was a part, managed to persuade them to go.

[21] In August 1943, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King hosted the Quebec Conference, at which Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt came together, and agreed to resume cooperation.

While he maintained that he did not divulge any nuclear secrets to his previous boss (although he had discussed patent rights), Halban was not allowed to work or to leave North America for a year, although he left the Montreal Laboratory in April 1945.

He also supplied instruments, drawings and technical information, provided expertise from American scientists,[33] and opened a liaison office in Montreal headed by Major H. S. Benbow.

It also provided a means of efficiently producing medical isotopes like phosphorus-32, research facilities that for a time were superior to those in the United States, and a wealth of technical information related to reactor design and operation.

No evidence that he was a Soviet agent has ever been established,[43] but the GRU obtained samples of uranium and blueprints of the NRX, for which Nunn May could not have been the source, and Pontecorvo remains the prime suspect.

[45] The Montreal Laboratory had been a fruitful and successful international venture, although the Canadians had on occasion been resentful of British actions that were perceived as high-handed and insensitive.

One such action came in November 1945 when the British government suddenly announced that Cockcroft had been appointed the head of the new Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Britain without any prior consultation and at a time when the NRX reactor was still under construction.

[52] At the Combined Policy Committee meeting in February 1946, without prior consultation with Canada, the British announced their intention to build a graphite-moderated nuclear reactor in the United Kingdom.

An outraged Howe told Canadian ambassador Lester B. Pearson to inform the committee that nuclear cooperation between Britain and Canada was at an end.

Anglo-American cooperation largely ended in April 1946 when Truman declared that the United States would not assist Britain in the design, construction or operation of a plutonium production reactor.