The American Terrorist

Barry “Bubba” Wright is an American who has been contracting in the nuclear industry for over 30 years. He enjoyed working in Canada so much he bought a house and moved his wife and children up. Bubba was the first one to teach me the expression “Nuclear Whore”, and he helped me learn the ways of a contractor while working together in Pickering under Ludka.

One afternoon during the summer Bubba left work early to drive with his wife Sandy to pick up his kids from the Buffalo airport as they were flying in from visiting their mom in the southern US. The Big Chicken told Bubba he could leave early to go to the Buffalo airport only if he took some design verification work home with him.

So, Bubba and Sandy drove from Pickering to Buffalo with Sandy driving and Bubba trying to look at OPG paperwork. Their trip was uneventful, that is until they reached the US border.

This was just after 9/11 and as they increased security at the border, they installed radiation monitors. Apparently the day before Sandy had undergone a medical procedure for which they gave her a radioactive dye.

Sandy's radioactive treatment caused the alarms to go off all at once and Bubba and Sandy soon found themselves surrounded by armed guards.

When the guards looked inside the car they found Bubba surrounded in nuclear plant documentation, specifically drawings of one of the special safety systems at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station.

Before you could say ‘9/11’, Bubba found himself on the hood of the car in a spread eagle position, being frisked for hidden weapons of mass destruction, while screaming, “I’m not a terrorist! I was born in Tennessee!”

After checking Bubba’s paperwork, the guards soon believed this was just a misunderstanding. However, before letting Bubba go, they wanted to speak with Ludka at OPG to verify Bubba's story. They asked her to confirm that Bubba was an employee of OPG, working under her, and they wanted verification that Ludka gave Bubba approval to carry nuclear design drawings across the border.

Ludka was so afraid of getting into trouble she didn't say a word...she just panicked and hung up. The guards, a little confused at this point, explained to Bubba that he could not leave until they received confirmation. They invited him into a little room with no windows to wait it out.

Periodically throughout the evening the guards would hear a cry from the room of, "But I'm from Tennessee!"