Shinkolobwe
Shinkolobwe mine, 1925
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| Location | |
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 Shinkolobwe mine
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| Location | Shinkolobwe |
| Province | Katanga |
| Country | Democratic Republic of the Congo |
| Coordinates | 11°03′S 26°33′E / 11.050°S 26.550°ECoordinates: 11°03′S 26°33′E / 11.050°S 26.550°E |
| Production | |
| Products | Uranium ore |
| History | |
| Closed | 2004 |
Shinkolobwe is a town and a mine in the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), located near the larger town of Likasi and about 120 miles northwest of Lubumbashi. Around 15,000 people live in the town.
The mine produced uranium ore for the Manhattan Project. It was officially closed in 2004.
Shinkolobwe is the name of a nearby village, long since gone, and the name of an indigenous thorny fruit. According to Zoellner, it is also slang for "a man who is easygoing on the surface but who becomes angry when provoked."
The mineral deposit was discovered in 1915 by an English geologist Robert Rich Sharp (1881-1958). The mine was worked from 1921 onwards. Uranium-bearing ore was initially exported to Belgium for the extraction of radium; some of which was captured by Germany and postwar was transferred to Russia for the Soviet atomic bomb project.
The United States used Shinkolobwe's uranium resources to supply the Manhattan Project to construct the atomic bomb in World War II. Edgar Sengier, then director of Union Minière du Haut Katanga, had stockpiled 1,200 tonnes of uranium ore in a warehouse on Staten Island, New York. This ore and an additional 3,000 tonnes of ore stored above-ground at the mine was purchased by Colonel Ken Nichols for use in the project. Nichols wrote:
The mine was closed in 1939 and flooded. The US Army sent a squad from its Corps of Engineers to reopen the mine, expand the aerodromes in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) and Elizabethville (now Lubumbashi), and extend the port at Matadi, on the Congo River. Between 1942 and 1944, about 30,000 tons of uranium ore were sold to the US Army.
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