TNM Blast from the Past: Another atomic age

The Northern Miner’s 1951 coverage of Eldorado’s expansion at Beaverlodge — reprinted below — captured a country at the centre of a new atomic age.

Demand for uranium was accelerating under the United States Atomic Energy Commission’s early Cold War stockpiling program, which guaranteed prices and triggered a continent-wide exploration rush.

Canada, through Eldorado Mining and Refining and emerging private producers at Elliot Lake, became one of the Free World’s indispensable suppliers. Long-term contracts signed between 1951 and 1956 underpinned townsites and mills and haulage systems were built at record speed, while the U.S. government sought security of supply for both weapons and reactor fuel.

It was a period marked by quick permitting, direct state procurement and certainty: miners would produce, and governments would buy.

Seven decades later, nuclear power is again at the centre of an energy-security buildout, but for different reasons. This time the driver is soaring demand for carbon-free baseload electricity and the explosive growth of data centres needed for artificial-intelligence computing.