In a wide range of articles published by The New York Times this week following the death of former President Jimmy Carter, a piece of largely forgotten Canadian history has resurfaced.
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: Jimmy Carter’s Life, in 17 Objects]
Among the 17 objects, photographed by Tony Cenicola and described by Bill Marsh, is a yellowed certificate issued in 1953 by the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in New York State, declaring Mr. Carter an “atomic submariner.”
He was a naval officer at the time he got it. Mr. Carter attended the US Naval Academy from 1943 to 1946, en route to becoming the first in his family to graduate from college, and served in the submarine fleet during World War II. He was later involved in the development the nation’s first nuclear-powered submarines; Knolls’ certificate was for the completion of his training.
But before that, Mr. Carter saw first-hand the enormous power of nuclear power in Canada.
On December 12, 1952, a series of missteps and a mechanical failure led to a partial meltdown of the core NRX reactor at Chalk River Laboratories on the Ottawa River, about 180 kilometers northwest of the capital. The incident gave Canada the dubious title of hosting the world’s first nuclear reactor accident.
The NRX was rated at 30 megawatts that day, which was powerful by the standards of the time (today, the Bruce Power nuclear plant in Ontario produces 6,400 megawatts).
On the day of the accident, the reactor was shut down to check the cooling system. in the basement, worker lifted by mistake several control rods that can reduce and, if necessary, completely stop the chain reaction in the reactor.
This was quickly noticed, and the supervisor thought from some signal lights that he had lowered the bars back into place. But the lights were wrong: two or three rods were jammed and only partially returned to safety.
When the supervisor, who was still in the basement, called the control room with instructions to lower the bars, he also mixed up the numbers for the buttons that needed to be pressed, exacerbating the problem.
The power of the reactor jumped to about 100 megawatts.
That power surge lasted only one minute and eight seconds before the reactor was brought back under control, but the damage was profound. Fuel rods have melted or blown up. The basement was filled with a million gallons of highly radioactive water and debris. The reactor building, which had large glass windows, was dangerously radioactive.
A contingent of 150 members of the US military came to Chalk River to clean up. Among them was Mr. Carter, who led a group of about 12 Navy personnel from Knolls Laboratory. They were joined by 862 workers at the Chalk River site, 170 members of the Canadian military and 20 employees of the companies that made the reactor parts.
Morgan Brown, President Society for the Preservation of Canadian Nuclear Heritagewho runs a museum near Chalk River, told me that the Americans weren’t there to give technical advice, because the NRX was designed in Montreal in a joint Canadian-British project. But they provided equipment that Canada lacked, such as closed-circuit television, and gained experience and training in dealing with an unprecedented situation.
“American help is well appreciated,” said Mr. Brown, who worked for decades at Canada’s Atomic Energy, the owner of NRX, studying ways to prevent reactor disasters.
A progress report made several months after the Chalk River accident showed that Lt. Carter, then 28, and his group were working on a “system” that brought cooling water from the river into the reactor, Mr. Brown said.
In interviews, Mr. Carter recalled that his team used a model reactor to practice dismantling techniques in advance and worked in shifts to limit radiation exposure. And in 1959 a film produced by the US and Canadian governments shows those test runs — and suggests that standards for worker safety and disposal of radioactive waste were well below current practice.
The NRX reactor continued to operate until 1992. The Chalk River accident remains the worst in Canadian history.
The worst nuclear accident in US history, a partial reactor meltdown in the Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, will take place during the presidential term of Mr. Carter. A few days after the accident, he and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, toured the plant and told residents, “If we’re going to err, we all want to err on the side of extra precautions and extra security.”
(If you haven’t read it, I recommend it comprehensive and authoritative obituary of Mr. Carter 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 has covered the politics, culture and people of Canada and reported on the country for two decades
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