“We’ll have to shut down, but not for long, and we can make a hot start. So we’ll not lose the test. The leak is in the demineralizer bypass, We’ll put a freeze on both sides of the leak, cut out the faulty piece of pipe, and cap both parts of the line. It’ll be out of commission, but we don’t need that bypass line much anyway. How many stainless-steel welders are on tonight with you?”
“Three, I think. Maybe now there’s a couple more qualified.”
“Okay, here’s what we do. As soon as the radiation in the lower level gets down to ambient we can go in there. Once the reactor is shut down we’ll have an hour or so to wait, and we’ll need that to get organized. By the time Dusty gets here we’ll be all ready to go, and if he okays it we’ll have her back on the line in a couple of hours. We can keep the pressurizer hot and keep the bubble in it. It’ll be hot working alongside it, but nobody will be in there more than about three minutes, and nobody will receive more than the allowable week’s radiation. The main thing to be really careful of is to stay out of the path of the leak. That’s hot in more ways than only one!”
Rich spoke swiftly and, as before, in a low tone. He could see Baker’s discouragement vanishing, his confidence and enthusiasm mounting. A period of hyperactivity came over the crew of Mark One. The entire group was assembled for a briefing on the procedure to be followed, and each individual’s part in it was assigned. A plan of the compartment, showing the line to be cut, was procured and posted. Each of the men designated to enter the lower level studied not only his own operation but those of the persons preceding and following him as well. Liquid nitrogen bottles were made ready. Molds were prepared to hold the frigid liquid around the faulty pipe at the selected points. Tools, clean coveralls, shoe covers, gloves and masks were taken from storerooms and laid out. Supplies of salt tablets were procured, to be swallowed in advance by those designated to enter the lower reactor compartment.
When Rhodes arrived at the site, after a high-speed dash over the lonely highway from Idaho Falls, he required only a briefing prior to putting through the obligatory telephone call to Admiral Brighting in Washingon.
Richardson, following a brief but detailed conversation with an anxious Dusty Rhodes, was first in the lower level, his job to mark the point of the leak he had spotted and the locations of the two freeze points. Maximum ventilation had been on for some time, exhausting the hot, confined air of the lower reactor compartment. Cool air, streaming through the hatch in the insulated deck separating the two levels, flapped the legs of his heavy white canvas coveralls as he descended the hot steel ladder, but, once inside, the heat of the steel surrounding him penetrated swiftly through his baggy coveralls and through his shoes, gloves, cloth helmet — actually a hood covering his entire head — and his face mask. He had been prepared for it, knew what to expect, carefully breathed through his nose only and through the gauze with which his mask had been stuffed. Nevertheless, he nearly lost consciousness when the wild, searing heat first went down into his lungs.
The piercing, high-pitched shriek of the main pumps, no longer shielded by the heavy deck through which he had descended, tore at his eardrums. He could feel the delicate membranes of his ears reacting, toughening, screeching their protests into his senses, bruising themselves, swiftly dulling their ability to respond. Too late to do anything about this now. It should have been foreseen. The hood and mask were not enough. He must specify earplugs for all those who followed him.
The hot air shriveled the tender mucous linings of his nose and throat with every breath as he drew it in. Instantaneously he could feel the droplets popping out of his sweat glands, collecting, trickling down under his armpits, down his chest and backbone until absorbed by his clothing. Quickly his undershirt, and the civilian sport shirt, were sodden, as were his trousers along the front of his thighs and at the top of his buttocks. His feet felt tight in his suddenly moist shoes. He was grateful for the warm sweat. It would help keep his body temperature down.
There was no time to lose. His part was vital. So were all the other parts, so carefully rehearsed, to follow. He must do precisely what had been scheduled; exactly that, no more, and certainly no less. The pain in his ears was less. Thank heaven for that! To reach the faulty demineralizer bypass he must crawl over a portion of the main coolant piping. An insulating mat had been dropped down the hatch before him. He gripped it, struggled upright, draped it over the nearly incandescently hot, foot-diameter pipe. Sliding over it, he crouched on hands and knees to crawl under a heavy cable channel, squeezed upright between the reactor pressure vessel and a smaller duplicate, the pressurizer. The heat from both, reflecting from the curved steel plates forming the bottom of the cylindrical hull, radiated through the thin asbestos lining of the work clothing protecting him. Down on hands and knees one more time to crawl under the thin bypass line itself (very carefully, so as to avoid passing before the crack with its still-issuing steam), he finally was able to sit upright facing the defective pipe, on the hot curved bottom of the reactor compartment. (This, at least, was at a more normal temperature, thanks to the tank of salt water on the other side of the simulated submarine hull.) Working rapidly, he removed two sections of colored tape from a coverall pocket and fumblingly, but very carefully, wrapped them around the pipe, two feet apart. This would mark one of the freeze points. He crawled under the bypass line once more, around to the other side of the pressurizer, again positioned himself before the pipe, this time on the other side of the leak, marked the other freeze point with two more pieces of tape.
By this time, Richardson was totally bathed in perspiration, his body as wet as if he had jumped, fully clothed, into the cooling pond. He had heard old Navy tales of men crawling into the firebox of a steaming coal-fired boiler to make emergency repairs. What he and the others were undergoing — or would soon be — was at least as severe a physical test, he thought, as he tortuously retraced his path through the packed compartment. It was only Admiral Brighting’s insistence that all components be accessible which had made it possible to reach the bypass pipe. Otherwise, left to the standard designers and contractors, it would not have been. But, even so, there could have been more than the barest minimum of space…
The upper reactor compartment was a cool heaven, and so was the engineroom, where Rich ripped off his mask and hood and then, more slowly, removed his wet coveralls. A lab technician seized his dosimeter and film badge, hurried them away for immediate inspection. Red Baker, several turns away from his own descent into the lower compartment, handed him a glass of cold water and another salt tablet. “Get earplugs!” Rich gasped to Dusty and to the man next scheduled to go below. Then, in greater detail, he began to describe to both what he had seen and done. The man, who by prearrangement had been watching through the periscopes, appeared to understand. But Richardson, who could feel himself talking, could hear nothing as he carefully mouthed the words.
Dusty Rhodes was swearing, the dead telephone handset still gripped tightly in his hand. “Damn him!” he spit out. “He’s the most inhuman human being I know! Here we’ve made an emergency repair to keep his reactor running, with his approval, mind you, and you know what old man Brighting just said to me?” He slammed the phone into its cradle. “He said we should have properly inspected that line before starting up this series of tests. Three weeks ago! How in the hell am I supposed to have done that? Maybe he’s a superman, but we’re not! We’re just ordinary naval officers trying to do a job right. He’s responsible for faulty construction, not me!” Rhodes’ voice trailed off. His trembling fist slowly unclenched.