Thread by @ObtainerOf

*Thread*
Oppenheimer has brought a lot of attention to the Manhattan Project, but much of it still remains a mystery. Hiding deep inside the Congo, there is a geological miracle, a pit from hell that won us the arms race.

For about two centuries after it's discovery, Uranium was considered pretty useless. It could be used to make green glass, but it didn't have much value. Around 1900, Radium was discovered and quickly became the most valuable substance on earth.

Radium could be used to make things glow and even fight cancer. Uranium ore contains high amounts of Radium and Uranium also decays into it. All of a sudden there was a gold rush.

In 1915 Robert Sharp was prospecting for copper in the southern Congo. A local tribe pointed him in the direction of a hill where they would gather colored mud to paint themselves with. This peculiar coloration of the soil indicated it was rich in valuable minerals.

This hill was rich in Uranium, Radium, Cobalt, Silver, Arsenic and many other elements. When mining was up and running, so much Radium was being extracted that the worldwide price crashed by 50%. They named the mine Shinkolobwe after a local prickly fruit

At the time the Congo was still controlled by Belgium. So much ore was coming out of Shinkolobwe that it started to pile up in warehouses in Belgium and at the mine itself. When scientists split Uranium there was a collective "Oh shit" moment, governments now wanted Uranium

By 1940 demand for Radium had diminished and the mine was abandoned and filled with water. With Uranium now being in demand again Germans seized all of the ore still in Belgium, but it was not enough to support their nuclear program.

Col. Ken Nichols bought 1k tons of ore that the Belgium mining company had stored in Staten Island as well as 3k tons that were abandoned at the mine. This wouldn't prove to be sufficient, so in 1942 the US army went to the Congo, drained the mine and got it running again

Why go all the way to the Congo? Popular belief is that our Uranium came from the US and Canada, and while some did, here is where the extraordinary geology of Shinkolobwe was important.

Ken Nichols said that a Uranium deposit in the USA was lucky to be one tenth of a percent Uranium Oxide, the ore from Shinkolobwe was SIXTY FIVE PERCENT. At the time, our methods of processing Uranium were slow and inefficient. Without this ore, we would not have had a bomb.

Shinkolobwe was made top secret, struck off all the maps and the imported ore was laundered as other minerals. Even among people in the Manhattan project the belief was that all the Uranium was coming from North America and this myth has persisted until today.

After the war, top priority was stopping the Soviets from getting a bomb. Shinkolobwe was kept secret into the 50s as it was believed to hold half of the world's supply of Uranium. A processing plant was built in the jungle and the whole area was secured by NATO forces.

As time went on, the Soviets got a bomb anyway and refinement processes became efficient enough that the freakishly pure ore from Shinkolobwe was no longer needed, the mine was filled with concrete and forgotten...

Since its official closure, there has been decades of illegal "artisanal" mining of Shinkolobwe. Miners today say they are digging for Cobalt, but there have been reports of Uranium being extracted and exported. Other radioactive materials have been seized trying to exit Congo

For major powers like the USA, Russia and China, this rich ore is no longer necessary to maintain and build a large nuclear arsenal, but for a state or rogue group trying to build a weapon, it is extremely valuable. There is almost no security there today.

Shinkolobwe while operating was a pit of death and despair. The workers were all poisoned by the cocktail of toxic minerals and now the entire area is polluted, not to mention the destruction caused by the bombs that came from that pit of hell.