I can’t believe it was February of last year that the 39th president of the US was at the hospice care stage, and yet in October 2024 the old bugger’s still here and just celebrated his centenary (the first US president to do so, indeed). Normally I hear “hospice” and assume the person receiving it has days to live, but what Carter said about wanting to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris evidently worked for him… with a bit of luck he’ll not only vote for her in a few weeks but he’ll get to see her win, too. I’m pleased to see him make it this far, I think whatever the faults of his presidency, his post-presidential career more than atoned for it. And, frankly, when you consider THIS episode from his naval career…
On December 12, 1952, an accident with the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown, resulting in millions of liters of radioactive water flooding the reactor building’s basement. This left the reactor’s core ruined. Carter was ordered to Chalk River to lead a U.S. maintenance crew that joined other American and Canadian service personnel to assist in the shutdown of the reactor. The painstaking process required each team member to don protective gear and be lowered individually into the reactor for 90 seconds at a time, limiting their exposure to radioactivity while they disassembled the crippled reactor. When Carter was lowered in, his job was simply to turn a single screw. During and after his presidency, Carter said that his experience at Chalk River had shaped his views on atomic energy and led him to cease the development of a neutron bomb.
…I suspect he was probably lucky to make it to 30, let alone 100, cos that would still have been a lot of radiation to absorb. Wonder what the lifespans of the other team members were by comparison…
