{"id":36106,"date":"2022-07-22T15:52:05","date_gmt":"2022-07-22T15:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/?p=36106"},"modified":"2022-07-22T15:52:05","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T15:52:05","slug":"first-nuclear-accident-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/first-nuclear-accident-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"First Nuclear Accident in the World"},"content":{"rendered":"
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First nuclear accident occurred in Ontario in 1952, followed by a second incident there in 1958. A look back at these events now that the federal government is compensating workers who took part in cleanup efforts.<\/em><\/p>\n

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George Kiely is at a loss for words. On a July morning in 2021, I phone to get his reaction to the federal budget<\/a> tabled three months earlier. One measure had caught my eye: $22.3 million set aside for several hundred workers who cleaned up Chalk River Laboratories after two nuclear accidents in the 1950s. I hadn\u2019t known about these incidents.<\/a><\/p>\n

Kiely knows them all too well. He and other retired employees of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL)<\/a>, a Crown corporation, had fought for thirteen years for some form of recognition for the risks they faced during the accidents. Before my call, he hadn\u2019t heard that their efforts had paid off. I am as puzzled as he is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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George Kiely is at a loss for words. On a July morning in 2021, I phone to get his reaction to the federal budget<\/a> tabled three months earlier. One measure had caught my eye: $22.3 million set aside for several hundred workers who cleaned up Chalk River Laboratories after two nuclear accidents in the 1950s. I hadn\u2019t known about these incidents.<\/a><\/p>\n

Kiely knows them all too well. He and other retired employees of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL)<\/a>, a Crown corporation, had fought for thirteen years for some form of recognition for the risks they faced during the accidents. Before my call, he hadn\u2019t heard that their efforts had paid off. I am as puzzled as he is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

After a long pause, he mentions his friend and former coworker Al Donohue, who is ninety-two. \u201cI hope we live long enough to get the reward,\u201d says Kiely, who is eighty-nine.<\/p>\n

This story begins at the Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al. During the Second World War, the university housed a secret laboratory set up through an alliance between Canada, Britain, and the United States. Several hundred researchers and technicians conducted nuclear research there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Montreal Laboratory had two goals: build reactors to supply electricity and produce plutonium to eventually make a bomb,\u201d says Gilles Sabourin, author of Montreal and the Bomb<\/a><\/em>, published in English in 2021. \u201cThe lab carried out experiments and worked on the design of the NRX [National Research Experimental] reactor and a plutonium-extraction plant.\u201d The plan was to build the facilities in Chalk River, 180 kilometres north of Ottawa.<\/p>\n

Then, in 1945, the world\u2019s first atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico. Two others were dropped on Japan a few weeks later, bringing the war to an end.<\/p>\n

One month after the bombings, Chalk River Laboratories (which was actually located in Deep River) opened. The public was told that the labs would be doing peaceful nuclear research. Still, military objectives remained: Canada supplied the United States with uranium for military purposes for two decades after the war, along with 252 kilograms of plutonium between 1959 and 1964.<\/p>\n

NRX became operational<\/a> in 1947. With a twenty-megawatt capacity, it was then \u201cthe world\u2019s most powerful and best reactor for doing experiments,\u201d says James Ungrin, who worked for its accelerator physics branch. Ungrin gives me a tour of the museum set up by the Society for the Preservation of Canada\u2019s Nuclear Heritage<\/a> in Deep River. The museum is packed with intriguing artifacts, including red underwear worn by workers in \u201cactive\u201d zones, the colour a reminder to change their shorts before they went home.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of a sudden, AECL and Chalk River had a phenomenal profile worldwide,\u201d Ungrin tells me. \u201cThere were experiments done here that couldn\u2019t be done elsewhere. Experts were flocking here.\u201d<\/p>\n