“What’s happened, Red? Did you abandon the reactor compartment?”
“Had to, Rich! All our dosimeters were way up! Couldn’t take a chance on staying!”
“Any idea what happened?”
“There’s steam in the lower level. I saw it through the periscope myself. Something has given way down there, is my guess!”
“Did you scram?” Richardson hissed the question to Baker alone. He already knew the answer, for the turbo-generator sets which provided power for the simulated submarine were still running. Unless the reactor had been shut down only during the past few seconds, less than a minute, they would no longer be getting steam.
“Not yet. Maybe I’d better. It just happened less than five minutes ago. Somebody noticed his dosimeter had climbed, and then we all checked our own and saw the same thing, and about the same time somebody looked in the lower level through the periscope and saw steam. But everything’s still running okay.”
“But Red, we can’t leave the reactor untended.”
“I know,” said Baker uncertainly. “I guess we should scram, but we were hoping to finish this test run tonight…” His voice dropped. He had been recently put in charge of a watch section and was known to be a good technician. Clearly, however, his training had not yet equipped him to make a decision of this magnitude.
Richardson dropped his voice to a low note meant for Baker only. “Have you called Dusty?”
“Uh, no. I guess I should…”
“Better do that right away. How long did it take your dosimeters to rise, and how high did they go?”
“Maybe five minutes, and they’re all pretty near the top. So it was a pretty healthy dose we all got.”
“If they didn’t hit the peg you didn’t get much radiation, Red. Have somebody collect the film badges and get them checked. That will give you a better idea of it. Tell someone else to call Rhodes. He’s got the responsibility for the plant and will have to take charge of this. It will take him more than an hour to get here, though, and we’ve got to decide what can be done before then.” Richardson still spoke in a carrying whisper. Unconsciously he had been giving orders, and equally unconsciously, Baker moved with alacrity to carry out the only sensible program that presented itself.
Richardson was staring through the glass eyeport in the door. It was not possible to look into the lower level of the reactor compartment where the steam leak existed, for that could be seen only through the two “periscopes” which penetrated the thick lead-and-plastic-shielded deck between upper and lower reactor spaces. There was a hatch in the deck, but no one could go into the lower level until the reactor had been shut down, and then only after residual radiation had died away. Everything that could be seen in the upper level was as it should be. Clearly, the only way anything could be discovered was to reenter the upper level and look through the two periscopes.
He had felt the quickened pulse before. There were chances to be taken, a risk for what might be gained, the problem of attaining the objective with danger to the fewest number of people. Or, what was the same thing in a different sense, how to use the maximum number of people with the minimum exposure to each individual. And suddenly, there it was. An idea. But first, something more had to be known about the problem.
“Baker,” he said. He nearly barked the name, realized too late he had reverted to type and used the man’s surname. Baker had been seeing to the film badges which, upon development in the lab, would accurately measure the degree of radiation received by each person.
“Yessir!”
“Red, I wasn’t aboard when the trouble started, and my dosimeter is still on zero. I’m going into the reactor compartment to take a good look through the periscopes, and I’ll watch my dosimeter at the same time. I’ll come back out here before it hits the peg at the top. We’ve got to find out where the steam is coming from.”
“It’s got to be in the primary loop, Rich. The radiation level went up at the same time as the leak was discovered. In fact, that’s how we found it.”
“Where in the primary loop? That’s the question. If we can find out which line is leaking, perhaps we might be able to do something about it.”
“Maybe we should scram out anyway. I hate to think of anyone going in there…”
“You told me you were in the upper level for five minutes yourself, just now, and your dosimeter didn’t even peg. You didn’t get as strong a dose as from an ordinary radium-dial wristwatch!”
Radium-dial watches had been banned from Mark One because their presence set off all the delicately tuned warning devices. Richardson could tell from the look on Baker’s face that he had got in a telling point. “Okay, sir, maybe we’ll have something from the film lab by the time you come back out.”
“Good, Red. Ask them to send down a new film badge for me, too, and we’ll send up the one I’ve got on to see how badly it got fogged.” Richardson spun the dogging handwheel, pushed open the submarine-style door, stepped inside. Directly in front of him, dominating the compartment, was the tall, cylindrical stainless-steel shell, on top of the reactor, which protected the control rod drive mechanisms and the tops of the control rod housings. On either side of the reactor compartment two large, heavily insulated domes projected through the floor and nearly touched the curved overhead. These were the steam generators, corresponding to boilers in a conventionally powered ship. From the tops of the two domes a pair of large insulated pipes passed through huge steam stop valves and then joined together in a single larger pipe which led aft to the engineroom. A profusion of smaller equipment, mostly control and monitoring panels, filled the remainder of the space except for the narrow walkway in the middle and around the reactor top.
Richardon’s first move was to inspect his dosimeter, which he held up, telescope-fashion, to the nearest light. The index was moving, but not perceptibly. That was good. The radiation level was at least well within human tolerance. Clipping the device back into his shirt pocket, he grasped one of the periscopes and looked down into it. Unlike a submarine attack periscope, which went up, had two magnifications and could measure range, this one went down through the deck and had no magnification at all. It combined all its far simpler controls in a single handle by which it could be swung around to permit inspection of about half the space beneath the deck, where the reactor itself, and all its principal components, were located. He had expected to find the place foggy with steam, but there was only a slight mist issuing from somewhere on the other side of the tremendous steel pressure vessel housing the reactor proper.
He moved to the other periscope, looked a long searching moment through it. The point of issuance of the steam, a tiny stream of vapor, could not be directly seen. There must be the tiniest of cracks in one of the auxiliary pipes, not a main one. The wisp of steam was issuing from its other side. It was what he had hoped to find. A leak in the primary loop itself could not be repaired without completely shutting down and draining it. Since it was a small subsidiary line, there might be some other way.
He seized his dosimeter, held it in his hand while still looking through the periscope, straightened up quickly to peer through it: good! It had mounted only about a quarter of the way up its scale.
Back to the periscope, twisting it slightly, focusing as carefully as he could set the eyepiece, following the faulty line as far as the instrument would let him see. At one point he crossed over again to the other periscope, identified the line he was inspecting, following it further. There was indeed a way!
“Red,” said Rich, once again back in the engineroom, “it’s a very small leak, a pinhole, and we can fix it.”
“How? How are we going to fix it without shutting down?”