How a future U.S. president helped avert nuclear disaster near Canada's capital

A viral post from the Historical Society of Ottawa is illuminating a part of the region's past that few in the area — or the country — have ever heard before.

Ben Weiss, co-ordinator of the society's Facebook page and speaker series, recently posted about the world's first nuclear reactor meltdown. And while Chornobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island often come to mind when nuclear incidents are brought up, this one happened less than 200 kilometres from the Canadian capital.

Even more interesting is catastrophe was averted, in part, with help from future U.S. president Jimmy Carter.

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Carter, a U.S. Navy lieutenant who was working on a nuclear submarine project in Schenectady, N.Y., at the time, was called upon to head north.

Carter led a team of men on the mission, which required the reactor to be shut down, taken apart and replaced. An exact replica of the reactor was built at a playground nearby, with Carter and his troops practising taking it apart and putting it back together as quickly as possible.

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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/chalk-river-nuclear-accident-1.6293574