General
Jimmy Carter and Canada’s Worst Nuclear Reactor Accident
The former American president, who died this week at 100, was among those who came to clean up a partial meltdown at Chalk River, Ontario.
In the wide range of articles published by The New York Times this week after the death of former President Jimmy Carter, a fragment of largely forgotten Canadian history resurfaced.
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter on Fifth Avenue in New York in 1976.Credit…D. Gorton/The New York Times
The Times’s visual story of his life, told through a variety of objects, reveals how Mr. Carter came to assist in the cleanup of a major nuclear accident near Ottawa in 1952.
[Read: Jimmy Carter’s Life, in 17 Objects]
Among the 17 objects, photographed by Tony Cenicola and described by Bill Marsh, is a yellowed certificate issued in 1953 by the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in New York State, proclaiming Mr. Carter an “atomic submariner.”
He was a naval officer at the time he received it. Mr. Carter had attended the U.S. Naval Academy from 1943 to 1946, on his way to becoming the first in his family to graduate from college, and served in the submarine fleet during World War II. Later, he was involved in the development of the nation’s first nuclear-powered submarines; the Knolls certificate was for completing his training.
