Uranium mining by country largest Canadian mines are located in the Athabasca Basin of northern Saskatchewan. Canada's first uranium discovery was in the Alona Bay area, south of Lake Superior Provincial Park in Ontario, by Dr. John Le Conte in 1847. The Canadian uranium industry, however, really began with the 1932 discovery of pitchblende at Port Radium, Northwest Territories. The deposit was mined from 1933 to 1940, for radium, silver, copper, and cobalt. The mine shut down in 1940, but was reopened in 1942 by Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited to supply uranium to the Manhattan Project. The Canadian government expropriated the Port Radium
Fuel element failure entering the coolant, the pellets of fuel are normally encased in tubes of a corrosion-resistant metal alloy (normally Zircaloy for water-cooled reactors). Those elements are then assembled into bundles to allow good handling and cooling. As the fuel fissions, the radioactive fission products are also contained by the cladding, and the entire fuel element can then be disposed of as nuclear waste when the reactor is refueled. If, however, the cladding is damaged, those fission products (which are not immobile in the uranium dioxide matrix) can enter the reactor coolant or storage water and can be carried out of the