Tom opened up a slide with a series of statistics. He read them out loud. “By the end of the Cold War, the project expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the more than 60,000 weapons built for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.”
“Which brings us to what we’re dealing with.” He took a deep breath. “This level of nuclear productivity has left behind 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste, stored within 177 storage tanks, and 25 million cubic feet of solid radioactive waste. Any one of these storage tanks could have leaked, sending deadly levels of nuclear waste into the ground water, and effectively poisoning the Columbia.” Tom glanced around the table. “Any questions?”
Elise asked, “How long have the reactors been dormant?”
Tom said, “Most of the reactors were shut down between 1964 and 1971, with an average individual life span of 22 years. The last reactor, N Reactor, continued to operate as a dual-purpose reactor, being both a power reactor used to feed the civilian electrical grid via the Washington Public Power Supply System and a plutonium production reactor for nuclear weapons. N Reactor operated until 1987, before being entombed in concrete in the same process that was used on the other nuclear reactors.”
Tom pinched the side layer of the digital table, and then pulled up a new 3D rendering of the area’s geological layers. “Since the decommissioning of the Hanford Nuclear Site, geologists have discovered a second water basin, nearly eighty feet below the nuclear waste storage tanks. In 2011, the Department of Energy — the federal agency charged with overseeing the site — ‘interim stabilized’ 149 single-shell tanks by pumping nearly all of the liquid waste out into 28 newer double-shell tanks. Solids, known as salt cake and sludge, remained. DOE later found water intruding into at least 14 single-shell tanks and that one of them had been leaking about 640 US gallons per year into the ground since about 2010.”
Tom slowly superimposed the movement of the nuclear waste-affected ground water documented between 2010 to present day. “At current rates of movement, the plutonium production waste products are expected to reach the Columbia River in 2031 — so the question is, what else went wrong?”
He glanced at the crew’s serious faces. “Any questions?”
Genevieve pointed to a series of horizontal passages leading toward the Columbia River. “What are those?”
“Those are wet tunnels. Once used to pipe millions of gallons of semi-filtered water back out to the river. They were shut down in the early seventies after plutonium by-products were discovered in the water around Portland. We’ll be placing a Geiger-Mueller Counter in each of those tunnels to determine if any are responsible.” Tom glanced around the table. “What’s next?”
Veyron said, “Assuming we find the leak, what do we do about it?”
“We do nothing. Our job is to locate and report. That’s it.”
Veyron smiled. “Okay, what I meant was, what’s the plan — for those who are going to be working on it — to stop the leak?”
Tom said, “There’s a company of military engineers working out a plan B, while the DOE’s emergency response team is already on its way to the site to block the leak.”
“With what?” Veyron persisted. “Concrete?”
“Yeah, basically… and a whole lot of it.” Tom said, “Look, the Hanford Site occupies 586 square miles — roughly the equivalent of half the total area of Rhode Island. The original site was 670 square miles and included buffer areas across the river in Grant and Franklin counties. Some of this land has been returned to private use and is now covered with orchards and irrigated fields. The fact is, when the Manhattan Project was running, in an attempt to prevent spies from gathering any useful information, each arm of the Manhattan Project didn’t talk to the next one. There were many workers who didn’t know until decades later that they had been inadvertently working on the development of a nuclear weapon. This means there could be water pipes, underground tunnels, and even old nuclear waste storage facilities at any of these surrounding locations.”
Tom set his jaw firm. There was tension in his voice. “I don’t need to say what’s at stake here. Let’s go out and find this leak.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Sam switched on his flashlight.
He fixed the beam on the side of the deck. There was a clear line along the deck where the barnacles had reached and then stopped. It was a funny outline. Sam closed his eyes and tried to picture the ships position, floating in the water.
Guinevere asked, “What is it?”
Sam smiled, still trying to imagine it. He fixed the beam of the flashlight on the deck at the exact point the barnacles appeared to stop as if by magic. “See this mark here?”
“Yeah…”
“We can agree that’s the highest point the seawater reached throughout the Hoshi Maru’s long journey adrift across the Pacific Ocean.”
“Right. So what?”
“Well. Just try and picture the positions. If that’s the case, it means that for the last seven years, water has been over two thirds of the ship’s decks, leaving just the bow and forward compartments above water.”
“Why didn’t it sink altogether?”
“Good question. That’s what I wondered too. My guess is, being a fishing trawler with live fish holds all sealed in water-tight compartments, the Hoshi Maru has multiple recesses to trap air, producing built-in buoyancy chambers.”
Guinevere ran her eyes across the deck, trying to picture it. “So you’re saying the Hoshi Maru got hit by a tsunami, rolled over — potentially multiple times — without sinking. Then, as the tsunami withdrew into the ocean, it dragged the Hoshi Maru out to sea. Meanwhile, the fishing trawler’s built-in live fish holds kept part of the ship afloat.”
Sam nodded. “Which is how our monster managed to stay alive, like a rat scurrying for shelter.”
“How did it survive the original impact of the tsunami? For that matter, how did it not drown in the process?”
“I don’t know. But you want to see something else interesting?”
“Shoot.”
Sam fixed the beam of the flashlight to a point nearly thirty feet back along the hull. The color of the barnacles changed from a light gray, to a dark green. “Those are living barnacles. These, here,” Sam said, pointing to the first line of barnacles, “are dead.”
Guinevere made a curious half-grin. “What does that mean?”
“It means that the ship was fixed in this position in the water, and then, after many months, it miraculously changed into this position.” He used the angle of the flashlight to demonstrate what he meant.
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m saying that someone or something on board the Hoshi Maru must have pumped whatever water remained inside the hull out to sea, thus providing more room to live and survive inside.”