Ramona parked the car and, again, without saying a word, led the way to one of the buildings that housed several classrooms and laboratories. There was a large courtyard with many tables occupied by noisy students who were busy drinking coffee and laughing. On the second floor Ramona knocked on the door with a sign indicating this was the office of Prof. Matias Antonio Modena. Ramona exchanged a few words in Catalan with the tall thin man that appeared to be in his early sixties and then introduced Ollie as the emissary from Sweden.
The professor turned to him and in perfect English said "I am pleased to meet you Ollie. You can call me Matias. Ramona told me you came from Sweden to discuss matters of mutual interest".
Ollie respectfully responded "Professor, I am honored to meet you and am sure that we will find that we have similar goals. My organization has heard about your groundbreaking research in nuclear physics and engineering and it interests us".
"Unfortunately, no scientific journal has agreed to publish my work and the reasons the editor gave for rejecting it were based on peer reviews by narrow minded, ignorant and envious colleagues who do not believe that what I did in my lab is possible. They do not accept my reported experimental results and even went so far as to write to the head of my department here that I should be audited for malfeasance and for fabricating results".
"I am not a scientist, professor, but I understand that this is highly unusual. What did you do to upset them and raise such suspicions?"
"I spent hours on end working alone in the lab. I did this because all my graduate students, except Ramona here, have left me because they thought that I was insane, or so they implied. Ramona participated in most of the work but for safety reasons I preferred that she leave the lab when I performed some rather dangerous experiments. I must say that I have repeated the work several times and obtained the same results — thorium was transformed into uranium-233 without the use of a nuclear reactor or a standard neutron source, just by using an intense gamma radiation source. The scientific community is unwilling to face the facts and therefore I have been ostracized".
"Professor…"
"Please call me Matias."
"OK, Matias could anyone repeat your experiments and validate your results?"
"Well, young man, this has such a large commercial potential that I left out some technical details. Therefore, anyone attempting to repeat my work was bound to fail and indeed they did. The basic physical principle is quite complicated but in simple terms you could say that I converted common thorium into a very precious commodity — fissile material".
"May I ask how you gained access to a gamma source?"
"Very strong gamma sources are used in hospitals for radiation therapy or in facilities for sterilization of medical equipment and food products. Another application is in the chemical industry. Several sources are lost accidentally each year and they are called "orphan sources". For my experiments, I got hold of two such sources and by combining the radiation from both sources I created a single extremely strong source. I would rather not go into the details of the means I used to get these two sources, but suffice it to say that with enough money and the help of Catalan patriots it became possible".
"Aren't these sources difficult to handle and dangerous?"
"If you keep them properly sealed in their protective containers they are perfectly safe for someone who knows what he is doing. I did need some manual help and proper equipment to transport them to my lab, and there I disguised them as items of standard laboratory equipment. Even the audit of my work, carried out by the head of the department and the faculty dean did not identify the sources as I made sure they were sealed and no radiation leaked out".
"Professor, sorry, Matias, what is the efficiency of the transmutation you have achieved converting thorium into uranium-233?"
"Well, Ollie, my method exceeds by far the efficiency of neutron bombardment that occurs in nuclear reactors".
"This is very impressive, professor, can you tell me on what scale you have carried out your experiments?"
"So far only on a few grams of thorium, but scaling up should be simple, provided I can get enough gamma radiation sources. Purchasing thorium is very easy — several companies in India and China will gladly sell you as much thorium as you can pay for and ship it to you disguised as fertilizer or other chemicals for a fee, of course. High purity thorium is more expensive but can also be bought without the need to answer any questions".
"Do you mean to say that all you need to produce kilogram quantities are gamma sources, a few hundred kilograms of thorium and a suitable laboratory?"
"Yes Ollie, but then you need to separate the fissile uranium-233 from the parent thorium and this requires a small chemical laboratory and some patience."
"Why patience?"
"You need to wait about three months to allow enough time for the formation of uranium-233 from the intermediate product formed after irradiation of the thorium and nothing can be done to make this conversion occur faster".
"I understand that you need to wait a few months for that, but is it correct that this could be done in almost any chemical laboratory with a few additional safety measures?"
"Yes indeed, I can produce enough uranium-233 to fuel a nuclear power plant at a fraction of the cost needed to enrich natural uranium or to produce plutonium in a nuclear reactor".
"Professor, as you know, our movement is not too concerned with power plants and electricity production…"
"Ollie, please do not elaborate what other applications you have in mind. Given the proper utilities and a few months, I can provide you with kilogram quantities of high purity uranium-233".
"Thank you, Professor Modena for meeting me. I am sure that your scientific genius will soon be recognized by your peers and nomination for the Nobel Prize is only a matter of time once you show them that the energy problems of the world can be solved without using fossil fuels. I need to present these exciting ideas to my organization and convince them to fund your project and lend you all the assistance you need. I will be in touch as soon as I can".
"Thank you Ollie. It was a pleasure meeting such an enthusiastic young man".
Chapter 2
Young Oscar Gunnar Axelsson, Ossi, was in the final year of his undergraduate studies of mechanical engineering and trying to decide what to do after graduation. Despite his blond good looks he had not managed to form a lasting relationship with any of the many female students that also attended the university. Sure, he had been through several one-night-stands where each side just sought physical relief from pressures and by mutual consent took advantage of each other. Seeing that his classmates knew exactly what they planned to do after leaving the university — some intended to go on and get an advanced degree, others wanted to start a bourgeois career with jobs in industry or government while a few enterprising soles wanted to start their own high-tech company — Ossi felt somewhat like an outcast. His best friends were two dark skinned students who were second cousins, Ahmed and Abdullah had immigrated to Sweden from Lebanon after one of the many civil clashes that ripped Lebanon. As devout Muslims they refused to join him in his drinking binges and did not show any interest in the female students. Although they were registered as students of political science at the university they spent more time at the Islamic community center than in the classroom, a fact that explained why after 6 years at the university (courtesy of the Swedish taxpayer money) they had yet to complete their bachelor's degree.