As a teenager, James dreamed of attending the United States Naval Academy. Following high school, James enrolled at Georgia Southwestern College where he studied engineering. The following year, he transferred to the Georgia Institute of Technology and continued working on his engineering degree. While at Georgia Tech, James enrolled in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and was appointed to the Naval Academy. In 1946, he graduated from Georgia Tech. In the following year, James graduated from the Naval Academy and was assigned to the USS Wyoming as an ensign. After two years working on a surface ship, he applied and was accepted for submarine duty. He served as the executive officer, engineering officer, and electronics repair officer on a submarine called SSK-1. When the Navy began the program to create nuclear-powered submarines, James was selected to assist in the design and development of nuclear propulsion plants.
On December 12, 1952, a series of missteps and mechanical failures at the NRX (National Research Experimental) reactor at the Chalk River Laboratories led to Canada’s distinction of hosting the world’s first nuclear meltdown. On that day, the reactor was powered down for an inspection of its cooling system. A worker mistakenly raised three of the control rods out of the water which kept the reactor cool. He quickly pushed the buttons to lower the rods back down. Lights on the reactor’s control panel showed that the rods had been lowered back down into the water, but the rods had only been partially lowered. In the confusion, another worker raised four more rods from the cooling water. With seven rods out or partially out of the cooling water for one minute and eight seconds, the nuclear reactor surged out of control. In that short time, some of the rods had melted or exploded before operators got the reactor back under control. Over a million gallons of highly radioactive water and debris had spilled into the basement of the building.
About 150 members of the U.S. military helped with the cleanup of the nuclear disaster. 28-year-old James led a group of 12 Navy men who worked on the “header’ which fed the cooling water from the Ottawa River into the reactor. Before entering the contaminated area, James and his men practiced on a mock-up of the nuclear reactor where they tried different dismantling techniques. Based on James’s calculations, the area in which they would be working was so contaminated with radiation that they could only spend 90 seconds on the repair job which they expected to take at least 15 minutes. To solve this dilemma, James decided that each man would go in alone for up to 90 seconds to complete a single specific task. James went in first and completed his task, then the next man completed his task, and the process repeated until the twelve men had finished the job. Although James had a seemingly small job, the removal of a single screw, he and his men helped in the aftermath of the world’s first nuclear reactor accident.
James had no lasting effects from his exposure to radiation and lived to the age of 100. He died this past December 29th. You may not have known of James’s part in the nuclear reactor cleanup, but surely you remember that he was once a peanut farmer from Georgia who became the longest-lived president in the history of the United States. His name was James Earl “Jimmy” Carter.
Sources:
1. “Lieutenant James Earl Carter Jr., USN,” Naval History and Heritage Command, Accessed January 5, 2025, https://www.history.navy.mil/
2. Ian Austen, “Jimmy Carter and Canada’s Worst Nuclear Reactor Accident,” New York Times, January 4, 2025. Accessed January 5, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/
3. “Restoration of the NRX Reactor: The First Meltdown (1959),” What Is Nuclear?, YouTube.com, accessed January 5, 2025, https://youtu.be/9wLJUZ3Vhao.
4. Nick Touran, “Restoration of the NRX Reactor: The World’s First Nuclear Meltdown,” What Is Nuclear?, https://whatisnuclear.com/
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