Jimmy C. in action – 1952
With all the praise for Jimmy Carter, our former worst President ever (both because he passed and it seems to be agreed that Biden surpassed him long ago) there is a legit story around that paints Carter in an extremely favorable light.
As we all know, Carter was an engineering officer who had the best training available at the time to serve on the second nuclear sub, the Seawolf., and had access to all the latest and greatest info on nuclear reactors (except for that one failed class in which he failed to learn how to pronounce them correctly. NUKE-le-ar, Jimmy, not nuke you-lar.)
So when Canada’s Chalk River nuclear research facility experienced a power surge that damaged its reactor, the U.S. sent Carter and his team. He was one of a few people in the world who could do it.
Fuel rods at the research reactor experienced a partial meltdown after the power surge. It ruptured the reactor and flooded the facility’s basement with radioactive water, rendering the reactor core unusable.
In his 2015 autobiography, “A Full Life: Reflections At Ninety,” Carter described the incident and his preparations for repairing the reactor. They built an exact replica of the reactor, true to the last detail (except the actual nuclear material) on a nearby tennis court to practice and track their progress.
Carter and his 22 other team members were separated into teams of three and lowered into the reactor for 90-second intervals to clean the site. It was estimated that a minute-and-a-half was the maximum time humans could be exposed to the levels of radiation present in the area.
You thought ‘peeing hot’ meant recreational chemicals in your urine. In Carter’s case, it was radioactivity – he had measurable amounts in his urine for six MONTHS after his work in Canada ended.
“They let us get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would now. It was in the early stages, and they didn’t know.”
The exposure was especially dangerous for Carter, whose family medical history is full of cancer deaths. His father died of pancreatic cancer in 1953, which led to Carter leaving the Navy that year. Cancerous tumors were found on the former president’s liver and brain in 2015 as he turned 91, but quick diagnosis and treatment led to a cancer-free bill of health a year later. Military.com
Carter’s father and three siblings all died of pancreatic cancer. Given the timeline (the reactor incident was December 1952, Carter’s six month nuke school billet started in March 1953, his father died July 1953) it looks difficult to know if he knew of his father’s cancer before he went to Canada, especially given the relative crudity of cancer detection at the time. But if a reactor is so hot inside that your time is limited to a minute and a half while wearing all the protection – just volunteering for that minute and a half takes some serious stones.
As many have said, Carter’s best work by far was when he was not in the White House. Me, I’m thinking he (and the other 22!) deserve all the props for working in THAT environment.
By the way, the Chalk River reactor has had several incidents since then but is still in ooperation.
Category: We Remember
All personnel involved in the recovery and decontamination efforts were limited to 600 millirem dose. For a comparison that the general public can understand, a pelvic CT is normally about 1000 millirem dose absorbed over ~45 minutes. This is not meant to downplay LT Carter’s leadership in the disaster response, but rather highlight the comprehensiveness and thoughts around safety that went into the response.
https://www.nuclearfaq.ca/The_CR_Accident_in_1952_WG_Cross1980.pdf
“Workers were authorized to receive up to 600 mR at anyone time and some were allowed to accumulate up to the 3 month limit (the ICRP limit was 300 mR/week at that time) before being taken off radiation work for the remainder of the 3-month period.”
“Leading one group from the USN was Lieutenant James E. Carter who was attached to a nuclear submarine then under construction. This outside assistance was of great help to Chalk River and, at that same time, the assisting organizations actually welcomed the opportunity to have teams being trained for radiation work get experience and test their equipment under real-life conditions.”
Anyone going into a 25 Rad/Hr radiation field to spend 90 seconds turning a bolt, or set of bolts, has my respect. That works out to about 600 millirem dose.
Good military service with distinction. Good person, honorable guy. Just sucked as a president.
He seemed to be a really likeable guy.
I wish I had a Billy Beer to crack in his honour
I have no issues whatever with his service prior to or after being President. I just think he was way over his head in the Oval Office. IMO he would have been a fantastic UN Ambassador or in charge of all the Ambassadorial Offices for the US rather than President. He had a knack for negotiation and mediation.
His service later as working with Habitats for Humanity was also great but likely wouldn’t have amounted to near as much as it did as a former President.
He was a good man, just not real Presidential material.
Carter was a smart economist, had to read some of his writing in college, and very good at getting people to meet halfway. For some reason this did not translate to getting the Congress to help him with the US economy. He knew what needed to be done, but Congress was not interested in helping him do it.
I was surprised to know he had been in the Navy after the Desert One fiasco, but maybe it was that he trusted others to be able to execute his vision when he should not have.
Maybe his exposer to all that radiation actually killed the cancer in his pancreas so that he lived to see 100. All of his siblings and Father died in their 50s.
I think his issue with the lack of success in DC was the fact he ran as an outsider…which got him elected after the Nixon/Ford years, but didn’t allow him to do anything once he became president on the scale he’d hoped to achieve prior to being elected.
Being an outsider I think he considered himself to be someone capable of being a disruptor, but the party faithful hindered that with the appointments of too many party faithful…
Disruptors can only be successful when they replace everyone, and then don’t use their party’s yes men/women as appointees.
Disruption never occurs with status quo appointments…
Nailed it, VOV! As I mentioned in the previous thread on his passing the entrenched PTB were not happy about his election and did all they could to make it difficult. Particularly his own party. After all it was Teddy’s “turn”. MIRanger made good points too. Trump faced the same issue in his first term and will probably continue to struggle with it in his next term.
Say what one will about him but it took balls for him and his crew to go into the hot zone with the limited knowledge and equipment they had at the time.
I was born in 79 and only read about Carter’s presidency. He definitely did seem over his head in the Oval Office. Part of my grad thesis was writing about great statesmen and I took a deeper dive into Carter’s last few months. I have to give the man credit: he worked TIRELESSLY to free the Iranian hostages and had a deal hammered out, but they decided to hold and given Reagan the kudos.
Fine man, outstanding servant, below average President
I have always felt betrayed by Carter for Pardoning the draft dodgers. It sucks that he did that.
My father-in-law was the bluest Dem you could ask to meet… but he sat out the ’80 election because Jimmeh pardoning the draft dodgers.
I had the honor of meeting Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn at a Habitat For Humanity event about 15 years ago and you could tell that both he and his wife were genuinely good, kind people. True, Mr. Carter was a weak President, but he was a good man and should never be compared to the lump of shit in the WH right now. He may rank third from last in the list of former presidents, but the gap between him and Barry 0 and the Turd in Chief is a massive void that can never be bridged. AOC’s railroad across the Atlantic will be built before that void would be bridged!
I will always give props when props are due. In this case they certainly are. I hope LT Carter was decorated appropriately for his actions in this case.
Although, I’m having a flashback to Saturday Night Live’s long skit about the 3 Mile Island accident, and how President Carter took a dose of radiation that caused him to grow to over 100 feet tall, enabling him (as Rodney Dangerfield said in the skit) to “Make Love to the Holland Tunnel–“
Oh my gawd!
“As we all know, Carter was an engineering officer”
Nope. Sure, he claimed to be an engineer and a nuclear physicist, but he wasn’t. He received a degree from Annapolis in Naval Science (if I remember correctly) and a six-month course in nuclear power plant operation. He left the Navy shortly after the course. He never served on a nuclear submarine.
“. He was one of a few people in the world who could do it.”
A very large exaggeration. At the time, he had no training, education, or experience with nuclear reactors.
An Engineering Officer and an Engineer are two different things. Engineering Officers are operators, not designers. The course he went through has also been elongated by a lot. The old course isn’t even adequate for an enlisted nuke snipe these days.
Like putting lightning in a bottle?
“are two different things.”
I know. I found nothing to indicate he was either.
“… a six-month course in nuclear power plant operation.”
Unh, uh. The pipeline hadn’t even come into existence at that point. It was graduate work at Union College mixed with plant ops at Knolls. He had maybe two months under his belt when the Chalk River incident occurred. Again taking nothing away from him – he was an educated sponge.
https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/biographies-list/bios-c/carter-james-e.html
Having lived through the Carter years I seem to have developed a less favorable opinion of him than most of those expressed here. Even after his Presidency he continued to cultivate my unfavorable opinion. His work for Habitat for Humanity failed to compensate for his arrogant interference in US and world affairs. Even “Slick Willy” got my sympathy when Carter interfered with his foreign policy.
Carter had very special love for Yasser Arafat. His acts during the Clinton admin was nothing short of heinous. I have no respect for Carter.
Soviet grain embargo, all for nothing. Thousands of farmers went broke, and Ivan spent another decade in Afghanistan.