President Jimmy Carter and a Canadian nuclear meltdown

Did the 39th president of the United States save the capital city of Canada from nuclear destruction?

If you spend a lot of time on Twitter, you may have seen a recent tweet from Professor Jeff Lundeen of the University of Ottawa, hailing an unlikely hero of Canada’s capital city… former U.S. President Jimmy Carter?

In 1952, Canada’s premier nuclear research reactor, NRX, underwent a meltdown mainly due to several human errors and miscommunications, with additional mechanical errors. The reactor staff and research physicists present identified and corrected the original errors within minutes, but part of the nuclear fuel began to melt.

Although the accident was halted before a complete meltdown occurred, the reactor remained in a damaged state, and it was clear that the cleanup effort would require a significant number of volunteers. The radiation levels in the reactor were high enough that any individual person would only be allowed to enter the reactor area for a short…