According to Dr. Whitlock's Canadian Nuclear FAQ, the second month of Carter's training included a visit to Chalk River.
--- Graham Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Boron fire good
Graham:
I remember reading a little about that visit. If I recall, the NRX had a partial melting accident. (The story can be found at http://infotech.fanshawec.on.ca/...ersonal/
nrx.htm. Water flow was continued after the accident to keep the core cool; eventually about 4.5 million liters of water passed through the core and ended up in the surrounding building. Thought the specific designs of the plant were quite different, I recognized a number of key event types in the accident sequence that were very similar to what happened at Three Mile Island.
The clean up required a large number of people; radiation levels were pretty high so each person could only do so much before they reached their exposure limits.
Canadian military members were assigned duties with the clean-up and when it looked like more people would be needed, the US Navy sent some of its nuclear trainees up to help with the clean-up. The accident occurred in December 1952, when Jimmy Carter would have been a TAD (temporary active duty) LT in Washington at Naval Reactors; he would have been a prime candidate to pick for the trip. (In the Navy, TAD people often do not have an regularly assigned duties and are regularly assigned certain kinds of clean-up details anyway.)
Jimmy Carter either wrote or told someone else that the experience was memorable. It is a real shame that one of his only hands on experiences with nuclear energy was donning anti-contamination clothing and wiping up after a leak in an environment where his exposure was being very closely monitored.
As I said in my post, he never got to experience the BENEFITS that nuclear power brings. When he was President 27 years later TMI happened. Once again, he donned anti-C's and must have thought - "here we go again."
Commenting by HaloScan
