Jimmy Carter helped clean up Canada’s Chalk River nuclear accident

A largely forgotten piece of Canadian history has resurfaced in extensive articles published by The New York Times this week following the death of former President Jimmy Carter.

The Times’ visual story of his life, told through various objects, reveals how Mr. Carter came to help clean up a major nuclear accident near Ottawa in 1952.

(Read: The Life of Jimmy Carter, in 17 Objects)

Among the 17 objects, photographed by Tony Cenicola and described by Bill Marsh, is a yellowed certificate issued by the Knolls Atomic Energy Laboratory in New York State in 1953 declaring Mr. Carter to be an “atomic submarine.”

He was a naval officer when he bought it. Mr. Carter attended the United States Naval Academy from 1943 to 1946, becoming the first in his family to graduate from college, and served in the submarine fleet during World War II. Later, he was engaged in the development of the work the country’s first nuclear-powered submarines; The Knolls certificate was to complete his training.

But before that, Mr. Carter got first-hand experience of the enormous power of nuclear power in Canada.

On December 12, 1952, a series of missteps and a mechanical failure caused a partial meltdown of the nuclear core. NRX reactor at Chalk River Laboratories on the Ottawa River, about 180 kilometers northwest of the capital. The event gave Canada the dubious distinction of hosting the world’s first nuclear reactor accident.

NRX had a capacity of 30 megawatts that day, which was powerful by the standards of its time (today, the Bruce Power nuclear plant in Ontario has a capacity of 6,400 megawatts).

On the day of the accident, power was turned off to check the reactor’s cooling system. in the basement, an employee grew by mistake several control rods that can slow down the chain reaction in the reactor and, if necessary, stop it altogether.

This was quickly discovered and the controller thought he had lowered the rods into place based on some signal lights. But the lights were wrong: two or three of the rods were stuck and only partially returned to safety.

When the controller, still in the basement, called the control room with instructions to lower the rods, he also mixed up the numbers of the buttons to be pressed, compounding the problem.

The power of the reactor increased to about 100 megawatts.

This power surge lasted only one minute and eight seconds before the reactor was brought back under control, but the damage was immense. The fuel rods had melted or exploded. The basement was filled with a million gallons of highly radioactive water and debris. The reactor building, with its large glass windows, was dangerously radioactive.

A 150-member contingent of the US Army has arrived in Chalk River for the Cleanup. Among them was Mr. Carter, who led a group of about 12 members of the Navy from Knolls Laboratory. They were joined by 862 workers at the Chalk River site, 170 members of the Canadian military and 20 employees of companies that make parts of the reactor.

Morgan Brown, President Canadian Society for the Preservation of Nuclear HeritageA museum owner near Chalk River told me that the Americans were not there to provide technical advice because the NRX was designed in a joint Canadian-British project in Montreal. But they provided the equipment Canada lacked, such as closed-circuit television, and had the experience and training to deal with the unprecedented situation.

“The American help was well appreciated,” said Mr. Brown, NRX’s owner, who spent decades at Atomic Energy Canada studying how to prevent reactor disasters.

Mr. Brown said a progress report from the Chalk River accident several months later showed that Lt. Carter, then 28, and his team had worked on a “nozzle” that supplied cooling water from the river to the reactor.

In interviews, Mr. Carter recalled that his team used a mock-up of the reactor to practice dismantling techniques in advance and worked in shifts to limit radiation exposure. 1959 year A film produced by the American and Canadian governments it shows test trials – and shows that standards for worker safety and disposal of radioactive waste are far below current practices.

The NRX reactor continued to operate until 1992. The Chalk River disaster remains the worst in Canadian history.

The worst nuclear power accident in US history, a partial meltdown of a reactor Three Mile Island It would take place in Pennsylvania in 1979, during Mr. Carter’s presidency. A few days after the accident, he and his wife, Rosalyn Carter toured the factory and told residents, “If we make a mistake, we all want to make a mistake with extra precautions and extra safety.”

(If you haven’t read it, I recommend reading it Mr. Carter’s extensive and authoritative obituary by Peter Baker and Roy Reed.)

Trans Canada

Ian Austen He reports on Canada for The Times and is based in Ottawa. Originally from Windsor, Ontario, he covers politics, culture and the people of Canada and has been reporting on the country for two decades.

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