Even with protective clothing, each of us would absorb the maximum permissible dose with just ninety seconds of exposure, so we had to make optimum use of this limited time. "The reactor core was below ground level and surrounded by intense radioactivity. "When a Canadian 'heavy water' nuclear power plant at Chalk River was destroyed by accident in 1952 by a reactor meltdown and subsequent hydrogen explosions, my crew were volunteered by Rickover to assist with the disassembly so it could be replaced.
#Nuclear reactor meltdown video full
Each time our men managed to remove a bolt or fitting from the core, the equivalent piece was removed on the mock-up."Ĭarter also recalled the experience in another book of his, 2015's A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety. "And finally when we went down into the reactor itself, which was extremely radioactive, then we would dash in there as quickly as we could and take off as many bolts as we could, the same bolts we had just been practicing on. We would run out there with our wrenches and we'd check off so many bolts and nuts and they'd put them back on," Carter told Canadian journalist and author Arthur Milnes. "We all went out on the tennis court, and they had an exact duplicate of the reactor on the tennis court. Navy Getty ImagesĬarter described the operation in his book, Why Not the Best?, which he released while running for president in 1976. Before the operation, which involved being lowered into the core, an exact replica of the reactor was built on a nearby tennis court, where Carter and his men practiced cleaning and repairing it.īefore becoming president, Jimmy Carter was a lieutenant in the U.S.
The intensity of the radiation meant that Carter and each member of his team could only spend about ninety seconds at the core location. The Historical Society of Ottawa said that as part of the clean up plan, the reactor had to be shut down, disassembled and replaced, with the team also needing to clean any spilled radioactive material. was then called in to help with the clean up the site.Ĭarter, a trained nuclear engineer who had worked under famed Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the Navy's nuclear program on the atomic submarine "Sea Wolf," was asked to lead a team for the clean up operation. The radioactive water also ended up in the reactor building's basement, before being pumped out into shallow ditches near the Ottawa River. Thousands of nuclear fission particles were released into the atmosphere. "This energy load would normally not have been a problem, but several experimental fuel rods that were at that moment receiving inadequate cooling for high power operation ruptured and melted," the FAQ section of the Canada Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactor website states. However, a defect in the NRX shut-off rod mechanism, combined with the human errors, caused a temporary loss of control over reactor power, ultimately causing it to surge to between 60 and 90 MW. On December 12, workers at the plant were preparing for a reactor-physics experiment at low power. The incident resulted in hundreds of thousands of gallons of radioactive water flooding the core and causing major damage to the reactor.Īs reported by, the major failure, along with "several poor decisions by facility operators," resulted in a nuclear fission chain reaction that caused the power level to rise exponentially.Īt the time, the NRX reactor operated at around 30 megawatts (MW). On December 12, 1952, the Chalk River NRX nuclear reactor suffered a partial meltdown.
Jimmy Carter is a badass who saved folks from a nuclear meltdown and is building houses for the needy.Ī real American hero! - BrooklynDad_Defiant! December 16, 2021
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