Jimmy Carter helped clean up after first nuclear reactor meltdown

Former President Jimmy Carter, 98, has entered hospice care at his house in Plains, Georgia, after a sequence of brief hospital stays, the Carter Center introduced in a Feb. 18 statement. The group mentioned the thirty ninth president “decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.”

Just a few days earlier than the announcement, a meme shared on Twitter claimed Carter led a staff of males after the world’s first nuclear reactor meltdown whereas he was serving within the U.S. Navy at age 28. The meme additionally claimed Carter and his staff had been uncovered to loads of radiation throughout this time.

Did former President Jimmy Carter assist lead the cleanup effort after the world’s first nuclear reactor meltdown?

Yes, former President Jimmy Carter helped lead the cleanup effort after the world’s first nuclear reactor meltdown.

Former President Jimmy Carter was introduced in to guide a staff of males who helped clean up after a nuclear reactor, referred to as NRX, partially melted down in Chalk River, Ontario, Canada, in 1952. U.S. Navy Lieutenant Carter, then 28 years outdated, was among the many tons of of Canadian and American servicemen who had been ordered to take part in cleanup efforts following the meltdown.

On Dec. 12, 1952, mechanical and human errors precipitated violent hydrogen gasoline explosions, the leaking of tons of radioactive water and a damaging partial meltdown on the NRX reactor. Some radioactivity was launched into the environment through the meltdown, however no accidents had been reported.

The workers of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, which owned the NRX reactor, and a staff of analysis physicists who had been current on the time of the meltdown had been capable of determine and proper the unique errors inside minutes, however a part of the nuclear gas started to soften, Katie Mummah, a nuclear engineer and Ph.D. pupil, wrote in a 2021 article.

“Although the accident was halted before a full meltdown occurred, the reactor remained in a damaged state, and it was clear that the cleanup effort would require a significant number of volunteers,” Mummah wrote.

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited determined to ask the U.S. Navy for assist in cleansing up the injury. Carter, who studied nuclear reactor know-how whereas stationed at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Schenectady, New York, in keeping with Mummah, was assigned to guide one of many cleanup groups.

Carter shared his personal accounts of the cleanup operation in his presidential marketing campaign autobiography “Why Not the Best?: The First 50 Years” and his memoir “A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety.” In each books, he mentioned he and his staff had been uncovered to radiation throughout this time.

“Because of our security clearance and experience in the field, we were asked to go to this Canadian site to help in disassembling the damaged nuclear reactor core. The radiation intensity meant that each person could spend only about ninety seconds at the hot core location,” Carter wrote in “Why Not the Best?”

Carter defined {that a} duplicate mock-up of the NRX reactor was constructed on a close-by tennis courtroom in Chalk River. He mentioned tv cameras monitored the precise broken gear that was far beneath the bottom.

“When it was our time to work, a team of three of us practiced several times on the mock-up to be sure we had the correct tools and knew exactly how to use them. Finally, outfitted with white protective clothes, we descended into the reactor and worked frantically for our allotted time,” Carter wrote.

Carter mentioned within the months following the cleanup operation, he and his staff had their urine monitored for radioactivity. According to Mummah, the cleanup course of was so profitable that solely 14 months after it started, the reactor was rebuilt and working once more.

“We returned to Schenectady after all of us had exhausted our permissible time in the radioactive site. There were a lot of jokes about the effects of radioactivity, mostly about the prospect of being sterilized, and we had to monitor our urine until our bodies returned to the normal range,” Carter wrote. “None of us suffered any permanent aftereffects, and I was glad to learn several years later that the Chalk River reactor was back in operation.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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