Operations in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada
Robert Del Tredici, Eldorado Uranium Refinery, Port Hope, Ontario, Canada, May 1, 1982.
Radium Turned Into Gas: Uranium is mined from Key Lake, Northern Saskatchewan. Through a series of chemical leaching processes, crushed ore is transformed into a powered concentrate called yellowcake. Most of the ore that goes into the mill exists as waste, which contains 85% of the ores’s original radioactivity. Yellowcake is purified at a Eldorado Uranium Refinery in Blind River, Ontario. When it flows out of the bottom of the refinery’s large solvent-extraction columns, the purified yellowcake, in aqueous solution, is termed “O.K. Liquor.’ At Port Hope, O.K. Liquor concentrates are converted into uranium hexafluoride gas. Shipping casks for the gas line the yard.