Former President Jimmy Carter, 100, passed away Sunday in his home town of Plains, Georgia. He left behind a lifetime of achievements, but long before his term in office and the charitable work that would win him the Nobel Peace Prize, Carter had a hand in an entirely different but no less essential line of work: helping bring America's nuclear-powered submarine program to life.
James Earl Carter, Jr. was born in the small town of Plains, Georgia in 1924. After high school, he attended Georgia Tech and then the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 1946. After two years in the surface fleet, he applied for a transfer to the submarine community and joined the crew of the experimental attack sub SSK-1 (later USS Barracuda), a conventionally-powered test platform for new sonar designs and sub-versus-sub tactics. Carter was part of the commissioning crew and served as engineering officer through the sub's first year in service.
In 1952, Carter applied for a transfer to work on the newest and most consequential project in the Navy: Adm. Hyman G. Rickover's nuclear submarine program. In June of that year, Electric Boat laid down the keel of the future USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear-powered submarine. Nautilus was the starting point for all the nuclear-powered vessels that would follow in later decades, including every Navy submarine and carrier in service today.
Rickover was famously selective in recruiting new officers to his program, and Carter passed the test. From November 1952 to March 1953, he was temporarily attached to Naval Reactors Branch of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, working on "the design and development of nuclear propulsion plants for naval vessels."
He did not have to wait long for action. In December 1952, the research reactor at Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario partially melted down. At the time, this was the most powerful research reactor in the world, and it was among the first examples of a serious reactor accident. Due to a series of human errors, multiple control rods were withdrawn from the reactor at once, and the 10 MW-rated reactor briefly put out 100 MW of power. This was enough to melt some of the fuel elements and set off a small explosion. The cooling system was leaking, but it was kept running in order to remove heat; in all, about 1.2 million gallons of highly radioactive wastewater accumulated in the basement below. Dispatched by Adm. Rickover, Lt. Carter led a team of one to two dozen Navy servicemembers to assist Canadian officials with the disassembly of the damaged reactor core and the cleanup. In a later interview, he recalled that he was exposed to high doses of radiation.
In March 1953, Carter began training to become the engineering officer for the nuclear submarine USS Seawolf - the first vessel in the world powered by a sodium-cooled reactor. The sub was under design and was on track to begin construction later in the year. But before Carter could join the project, tragedy struck. His father passed away in July 1953, and Carter resigned his commission to return home and manage the family farm (much to his wife's frustration). He was honorably discharged, and he returned home.
Carter did not remain a farmer for long. He was elected to the Georgia State Senate in 1963, then to the governor's office in 1971. He entered the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1975-6 as an unknown, but came from behind to secure it - then went on to defeat Gerald Ford.
In his single term in office, Carter grappled with multiple crises, notably a damaging combination of inflation and unemployment, and he lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980. He spent the rest of his years promoting democracy, public health and human rights, conducting hundreds of election-monitoring missions abroad with his Carter Center and helping build housing at home with Habitat for Humanity. His humanitarian work won Carter the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Carter is predeceased by his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, who passed last year. He is survived by his four children, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
