Over the last three years the Society for the Preservation of Canada’s Nuclear Heritage Inc. (SPCNHI) has accumulated a large collection of artifacts, photographs, books and documents.
SPCNHI also welcomes people’s anecdotes about the nuclear industry. The following story was contributed by Dave Winfield.
Mike Ward’s interesting Nuclear Heritage article (NRT December 2nd) on nuclear security reminded me of a curious experience of mine from Thursday, May 29th 1998.
I was at the Ford Research Reactor on the University of Michigan campus, Ann Arbor, Michigan, as the Canadian course director of a combined IAEA / Argonne National Laboratories (ANL) / AECL research reactor training course.
These international courses were at that time held every few years between ANL and AECL. The 1998 course attendees came from 28 countries and, maybe due to some extra IAEA budget that year, we had on this occasion a three-week schedule.
The program included eight days of lectures at ANL near Chicago, a one day visit to the Ford Research Reactor, a viewing of Niagara Falls, a one day visit to McMaster University’s research reactor in Hamilton, and then on to Chalk River for 4 1/2 more days of lectures and finally on to Ottawa for a night for attendees before flights home.
I arrived at ANL on Monday May 26 to finalize private bus travel to Chalk River, hotel arrangements and, importantly, to hand out 28 substantial brown envelopes of Canadian cash for a week of accommodation and per diems in Canada. This IAEA practice ceased after 1998, when I suspect the inevitable happened and some poor soul successfully messed up this somewhat dodgy process.
The previous week there had been quite a bit of international speculation that Pakistan was about to perform their first nuclear weapon tests, underground in a place called Chagai. This was expected to be in a sort of crazy, but real, Dr. Strangelovean, ‘us too’, response to India’s five nuclear weapon tests, two weeks previously.
One of our course attendees was a nuclear engineer / scientist from Pakistan. With 28 nationalities to work, eat, drink and socialize with and lots of organizing to look after, it did not cross my simple mind that this might be a concern.
After all our US host government had a stockpile of more than 10,000 nuclear weapons, and had tested over 1,000 of them up to a few years before. So what’s a few more compared to that, let alone what the USSR were also doing in that ‘business’?
So at 9 am on the Thursday as our group was listening to the Ford Reactor Manager’s introduction, the ANL course director tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to leave the room.
I was quickly informed of an urgent message from Dave Tregunno, AECL’s International Relations Director. It had taken a while to find us, as we were in effect in bus transit to Canada that day and there were no cell phones around then. Dave’s message was quite simple: “Please inform Winfield, under no circumstances is the course attendee from Pakistan to be brought through the Canadian border and allowed to travel to Chalk River”.
It turned out that only a few hours earlier, Pakistan had exploded no less than five nuclear weapons in very quick succession. Later of course the concern was to avoid any Canadian national press headlines along the lines of, “Chalk River Nuclear labs providing training for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program”. The NRT might well have had the scoop first, but with perhaps a more euphemistic headline, but neither came to pass.
Acting as a personnel deportation heavy lifter on US soil wasn’t really in my job description, or pay grade, but our reactor hosts quickly realized the solution was a quick and simple 30 minute limo ride to the nearby Detroit Metro Airport with flights then on to Islamabad.
The attendee from Pakistan was asked to pack his bags quickly. He needed no explanations, as by then he already knew what had happened. The airport was reached before 10 am.
Getting a flight to Islamabad at no notice was somewhat problematic, but eventually was solved by ratcheting up purchasing to first class one-way tickets on my personal credit card, via numerous flights eventually reaching Islamabad at some later time that I never did bother to check on.
The first local flight out was about 11.30 am after ensuring check in was complete and departure gate passed. Security in those days was fairly benign.
I got back to the lecture room by midday, just in time for coffee and lunch; deported and sorted; no publicity; no ramifications; no problems!
My one line expense claim later submitted for first class tickets was over $10,000 I think, luckily within my credit limit. While the expense amount was verified, I had no written evidence of justification.
Other than being refunded and picking up a bunch of Aeroplan travel points for my trouble, I never heard back from anyone on any aspect of this interesting deportation exercise.
As I now, after 22, years look at the very nice training project Class Book memento, published by Argonne labs after the course, I only just realized that all personal information and personal photo of the hapless attendee in question had been omitted from the Class Book Record. Well, fair enough I suppose, he didn’t complete the course but, for the very observant, the attendee group photo taken on arrival at ANL was complete and had not been photo-shopped.
The Society would be very pleased to hear others’ stories of their experiences. Contact any member of the Society executive or send your story to info@nuclearheritage.com.