In southeastern Washington, a 50-mile stretch of the river passes through the Hanford Site, established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project. The site served as a plutonium production complex, with nine nuclear reactors and related facilities along the banks of the river. From 1944 to 1971, pump systems drew cooling water from the river and, after treating this water for use by the reactors, returned it to the river. Before being released back into the river, the used water was held in large tanks known as retention basins for up to six hours. Longer-lived isotopes were not affected by this retention, and several terabecquerels entered the river every day. By 1957, the eight plutonium production reactors at Hanford dumped a daily average of 50,000 curies of radioactive material into the Columbia. These releases were kept secret by the federal government until the release of declassified documents in the late 1980s. Radiation was measured downstream as far west as the Washington and Oregon coasts
The nuclear reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, and the Hanford site is the focus of one of the world's largest environmental cleanups, managed by the Department of Energy under the oversight of the Washington Department of Ecology and the Environmental Protection Agency. Nearby aquifers contain an estimated 270 billion US gallons of groundwater contaminated by high-level nuclear waste that has leaked out of Hanford's underground storage tanks. As of 2008, one million US gallons of highly radioactive waste is traveling through groundwater toward the Columbia River. This waste is expected to reach the river in 12 to 50 years if cleanup does not proceed on schedule.
But it hadn’t been all bad news.
Large amounts of federal funding had been put into the Hanford Uranium Site in recent years to keep the uranium from leaching into the Columbia River at Hanford just north of Richland. For nearly a decade, the project had been expanded with tests showing very good results.
It was a good news story of humankind triumphing over prior mistakes.
Wells were being drilled now to inject a solution into the ground to bind the contaminating uranium to the soil and prevent it from migrating into the groundwater and then into the river. Much of the soil contaminated with uranium at the Hanford 300 Area has been dug up down to 15 feet, removing the majority of the contamination that could reach the groundwater.
But all that changed just three days ago, when dormant Geiger-Müller Counters, stationed throughout the Columbia River, suddenly came alive with reports of skyrocketing levels of deadly alpha particles, beta particles, and gamma rays.
Something had changed.
And their greatest fears had all been realized. The worst of the uranium rich, toxic groundwater, was now flowing directly into the Columbia River.
While politicians, EPA directors, and on-site cleanup project managers debated who was responsible, and what had gone wrong, the Tahila had been sent to locate the source of the catastrophic leak, and find a means of shutting it down.
Chapter Sixteen
At six a.m. Sam Reilly left the keys to the Thunderbird with a mechanic, thanked him, and headed south along S, Hemlock Street to find Guinevere and Caliburn, who had gone ahead in search of a local diner. The main street ran parallel to Cannon Beach, and reminded him of an old American town, with its log buildings, quintessential to every depiction of the wild west, clad with pine shingles that looked like they belonged to another century entirely. There were American flags raised high and a lone Sheriff making his early morning patrol on foot.
The entire town was still heavily bedded in fog.
Sam thought about the Hoshi Maru as he walked. Last night, Guinevere had revealed that her brother was on board the Hoshi Maru when it disappeared more than seven years ago during the Japanese Tsunami of 2011. What she hadn’t revealed was why someone from the UK had chosen to move to a small fishing village in Japan.
When Sam asked her, Guinevere had simply told him that her twin brother had left out of the blue in 2008. For some time, she had wondered whether he’d had a problem with the law or something, but in 2010 Patrick had called her and told her that he was living on a fishing boat in Japan. Patrick had told her he missed her and loved her, and if anyone ever came around asking, that it was imperative she didn’t tell them where he was living.
Sam walked with the determined stride of a soldier, his movements standing out from the rest of the pedestrians whose casual stroll and meandering spoke of tourists on vacation rather than people in active employ. Even the shopkeepers and café workers, who were still setting up their tables and chairs along the street, appeared to be doing so at a slower pace, as though vacation mode had seeped into their veins.
To the left, he spotted an open sign, that read, The Driftwood. Pets Welcome.
He stepped inside, where a small beer garden had been set up to serve early morning breakfasts to people and their pets. Seated in a corner booth, was Guinevere, with Caliburn next to a bowl of water near her feet.
“Good morning,” Sam said.
“Hello,” Guinevere replied.
Her head rested on her hand, her dark red curly hair falling forward, like a breaking wave. There was a faint scent of fresh shampoo. She looked great despite having only five hours of sleep. All the tension from the night before had vanished, and in its place was nothing but peace, interwoven with something else, too… some sort of teasing sense of adventure, barely concealed behind the sparkle of her gold speckled, green eyes.
The sight nearly took Sam’s breath away.
Caliburn, as observant as ever, tilted his head and met Sam’s eye with a tone close to reproach, and then returned to chasing a low buzzing fly with an apathetic snap of his teeth.
“Nearly got it,” Sam said, patting the dog on its back.
“I took the liberty of ordering us both the Big Breakfast. I hope you don’t mind, but Caliburn and I couldn’t wait, and I figured that you, being a typical man, would be happy to eat anything placed in front of you.”
Sam grinned. “And you would be right. Thanks.”
“No problem.” Guinevere said, “Did you find a mechanic?”
Sam nodded. “Yep.”
“Any luck?”
“Yes and no. He says he can tow the T-Bird to the safety of his garage until it can be fixed…”
She pressed him. “But?”
Sam sighed. “The car’s an antique. So, it might take him a couple days to track down a genuine timing chain.”
“And you need that before we drive to Portland?”
“Yeah, kind of…” Sam replied. “There’s probably a bus that will take you there if you’re in a rush.”
Guinevere smiled. “No. It’s fortuitous. Just another time in my life where the universe simply delivered what I needed, rather than what I wanted.”
“You wanted to go to Portland.”
She nodded. “I have a flight back to London tomorrow. But I think I need to see where my brother died.”
Sam said, “You know the Hoshi Maru’s been floating in the Pacific Ocean for more than seven years since the Japanese Tsunami. Hell, that amount of time exposed to the corrosive seawater, and the ship no longer looks recognizable. You know we’re not going to find your brother.”
“I know. But still. I would like to see the place where he had once lived.” Her eyes focused on the dark clouds in the distance. Her mind closed to the past. “Do you know he called me once? Just once when he was on board.”
Sam let her speak. “How did he sound?”