A future American President puts himself at risk on behalf of Canada

(This is my summary and abridgement of an article on the site military.com )

Lieutenant Jimmy Carter began working with the Navy's nuclear submarine division in 1952.

When Canada's Chalk River nuclear research facility experienced a power surge that damaged its reactor, the U.S. sent Carter and his team. He was one of a few people in the world who could do it.

Fuel rods at the research reactor experienced a partial meltdown after the power surge. It ruptured the reactor and flooded the facility's basement with radioactive water, rendering the reactor core unusable.

Carter and his 22 other team members were separated into teams of three and lowered into the reactor for 90-second intervals to clean the site. It was estimated that a minute-and-a-half was the maximum time humans could be exposed to the levels of radiation present in the area.

It was still too much, especially by today's standards. The future president had radioactive urine for months after the cleanup.

(And of course, those other 22 also exposed themselves to risk.)

The exposure was especially dangerous for Carter, whose family medical history is full of cancer deaths. His father died of pancreatic cancer in 1953, which led to Carter leaving the Navy that year. Cancerous tumors were found on the former president's liver and brain in 2015 as he turned 91, but quick diagnosis and treatment led to a cancer-free bill of health a year later.

His extensive knowledge of nuclear reactors and energy would come in handy when Carter became president in 1977, as other world leaders respected his knowledge on the subject.