The massive containment building, with its huge steel nuclear reactor, its three-foot-thick concrete walls sheathed with steel, had presented a particular problem to the plant’s designers. A large, heavy building requires a large, stable foundation. The best foundation of all is solid bedrock. But bedrock is at a premium in the Mississippi Delta. The land consists of layers on endless layers of mud laid down by repeated floodings of the great river. The mud can extend thousands of feet below the level of the land. There is no bedrock on which to safely build large structures and anchor them against the dangers of their own weight.
But the Delta land was cheap, much cheaper than elsewhere. With the plant requiring two thousand acres of land, the price of the land was a prime consideration in the plant’s cost. The plant’s designers were asked to solve the problem of building the huge, heavy structure on land that would not support it. The engineers simply built their own bedrock beneath the containment structure, a huge mat of concrete laced with a webwork of steel. This pad was twelve feet thick and sat in the rich Delta land like a paving stone, and it supported the vast two-million-pound weight of the reactor vessel, the steel-and-concrete containment structure, and the control facility, which leaned against the featureless containment building like a child clinging to his mother’s hip.
It was a tried and true technique, Larry knew, often used in areas like Miami Beach, where large buildings had to be constructed on shifting sand. It had the advantage of simplicity. The huge pad would be there forever: after it had been set in the Delta soil, no one would ever have to think about it again.
“Waaal,” Larry Hallock said, “let’s get this sucker warmed up.” He stood behind his metal desk, perched on its platform above the rest of the control room. The lights and indicators, which were on panels above the operators’ heads, were at eye level for Larry. He scanned them, noted the orderly rows of green and red lights, nothing amiss.
The room looked like the headquarters of a James Bond villain. Metal surfaces, control panels, thousands of buttons, displays with blinking lights. All painted in avocado green and harvest gold, the signature colors of the 1970s, the decade in which the room was designed and built. Larry wondered if a more recent control room would be painted different colors. Would a nineties control room be Hunter Green?
A box from Dunkin’ Donuts on one of the computer monitors near the door spoiled the illusion of a supervillain’s retreat. Larry helped himself to a chocolate doughnut.
“We’re set,” Wilbur said, having, from his lower perspective, just scanned the displays himself.
“Let’s give ’er the spur,” Larry said.
You didn’t want to start up a nuclear reactor with a bang. It would take almost a full day to get the reactor on line, to first increase temperature within the reactor, then start pushing steam through the turbine to generate enough power to put on the grid.
It was like handling a big horse, one that could stomp you flat just by accident, just because you weren’t paying attention. You just wanted to give it a little kick with your heels, get it moving without startling anyone, least of all yourself.
It was tricky enough so that Larry wanted to be in the control room for the procedure, just in case Wilbur, who was the control room operator and would be giving the orders, needed some backup. Larry was the shift supervisor, in charge of everything going on at the plant during his shift. Wilbur was in charge of the reactor under Larry’s supervision.
Larry and Wilbur watched the displays as boron carbide control rods were partially withdrawn from the reactor, as neutrons began to multiply and the chain reaction began. The scent of roses floated through the control room: Larry had bought a massive vase of yellow roses for his wife, who had a birthday today. He moved the roses out of his line of sight, sat in his wheeled metal chair, and thought about putting his boots up on his desk, but decided not to.
Larry put a hand on the scarred metal surface of his desk and felt a little tremor through his fingertips. Pumps, distant but powerful, steam moving through massive pipe. Valves tripped open as pressure built. Words floated to Larry as he watched the displays. Something about Ole Miss and the Rose Bowl. No day was complete without talk of football. Not in Mississippi.
One of the operators interrupted the talk of the gridiron in order to make a report. “Holding at ten percent.”
Ten percent was one of the check points, where all concerned would be checking their instruments, making certain that everything was operating normally.
Larry scanned the displays over the operators’ heads. Everything looked fine.
“You going to do anything special for your wife’s birthday, Mr. Hallock?” Wilbur asked.
“Tonight we’ve got reservations at the Garden Court in Vicksburg.”
“Getting some of that Creole food, huh? It’s too hot for me.”
Larry grinned. “You best not try any New Mexico chile, then.”
“I don’t even put pepper on my grits in the morning.”
Larry looked at the displays, at the lights shifting, red and green.
“Bland is boring,” he said. “Me, I like a little spice in my life.”
“Everything checks, Larry,” Wilbur said. “Still holding at ten percent.”
“Waaal,” Larry said, “let’s goose her a little.”
Boron carbide rods slid smoothly out of the reactor. Neutrons turned water to steam. Steam shot under unimaginable pressure through massive thirty-six-inch pipes.
Larry put his boots on the desk and thought about horses.
Four shocks of an Earthquake have been sustained by our town, and its neighborhood, within the last two days. The first commenced yesterday morning between two and three, preceded by a meteoric flash of light and accompanied with a rattling noise, resembling that of a carriage passing over a paved pathway, and lasted almost a minute. A second succeeded, almost immediately after, but its continuance was of much shorter duration. A third shock was experienced about eight o’clock in the morning, and another today about one.
Perfume floated into the Oval Office from the Rose Garden. The economics briefing book, with its tasteful white plastic cover and presidential seal, had migrated from the President’s footstool to the top of his desk in the West Wing. The London meeting of the G8 countries was only a week away. The President was now immersing himself in figures concerning gross domestic product, financial markets, foreign direct investment, prices and wages, output, demand, jobs, commodities, exchanges, and reserves.
Fortunately the President liked this kind of detail work. Facts and statistics were easy compared to trying to manage Congress, foreign leaders, or for that matter the arrogant turf warriors of his own party. He had a number of proposals he wanted to make at the G8 conference. Proposals having to do with the removal of trade barriers, pollution control, expansion of the information infrastructure, practical assistance to Third World countries. Proposals that only the leader of the world’s primary superpower could make.
If only, he thought, goddam Wall Street didn’t stab him in the back while he was off in London trying to get things done.
The President’s phone buzzed, and he reached for it while trying to absorb a graph on current-account balances. Oil-producing states, he saw, were benefiting from a slight rise in the cost of fossil fuels.
“Judge Chivington for you, sir,” said his secretary.