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Boulby is the world’s first and only producer of the unique mineral, Polyhalite
Boulby Helps to Beat the Winter Weather
The mine is one of the main producers of rock salt, which is vital to helping keep roads open. It is responsible for supplying around half of the UK’s needs for de-icing material for local authorities and highway contractors. Without salt from Boulby, the UK would almost certainly have to rely on carbon heavy imports from other countries. By providing this key resource, ICL Boulby helps protect the UK’s roads and Britain’s climate.
The Boulby Underground Laboratory is a multi-disciplinary deep underground science facility operated by the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), working in partnership with ICL Boulby.
Boulby is one of just a handful of facilities world-wide suitable for hosting ultra-low background and deep underground science projects. Boulby is a special place for science. It is ‘a quiet place in the Universe’, where studies can be carried out almost entirely free of interference from natural background radiation, in particular from natural ‘cosmic rays’ which perpetually bombard the Earth’s surface.
A unique collaboration with NASA at ICL Boulby mine is promoting research of Mars. The mine allows researchers to simulate a surrounding similar to that of Mars in which they can explore different tools which may later be used on the surface of the planet and, perhaps, the moon.
One of the leading projects in the study of Mars is NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). This is a mission which uses a mobile lab called Curiosity, a probe which landed on Mars in 2012 and has continued to send valuable information about the planet to NASA. To try and simulate Martian conditions, NASA uses the data collected by Curiosity, and collaborates with ICL’s Boulby mine in North England.
Read MoreThe Boulby underground Lab is the UK’s national deep underground science facility and one of just a few such facilities in the world. The laboratory, hosted at Boulby, has been growing, and recently, thanks to a £1.8M investment from STFC and ongoing support from ICL Boulby, a new underground laboratory was built to enable Boulby to host current and future science for decades to come.
With a small onsite staff, the facility supports the work of over 70 scientists from 20 universities and research institutes in the UK and overseas.
Like other activities at ICL Boulby, the laboratory is located 1,100m under the Earth’s surface and hosts a number of world-leading science projects. Studies underway at Boulby range from the search for Dark Matter in the Universe, to studies of geology and geophysics, climate, the environment, life in extreme environments on Earth and beyond.
