Hot Water (3 page)

“I won’t say anything unless you can prove it to me first. No scripts or spin. I get full access to your research and findings. You lie to me or make me lie to them and I’ll go public, I swear I will.”

“Wouldn’t expect anything less.” He was smart enough to hide his smile.

“And if I find anything that leads me to believe that there is something wrong with the reactor, I’m not holding back. No confidentiality clause.”

“Done.” He stood and held his hand out to AJ.

She glanced at Elizabeth, who gave her a nod, then took it.

Grandel shook. “Welcome to the family.”

THREE

We moved into the office. Elizabeth began drawing up a contract while Grandel unrolled a sheaf of blueprints across the dining table.

“You know how a conventional nuclear plant works, right?”

Wrong. I wiped my palms on the back of my jeans, hoping he didn’t notice. Everything I knew about nuclear power could fit into a sewing thimble, with plenty of room left over for my thumb. But I
would
know everything once I got home and David had a chance to bring me up to speed. One of the perks of living with a nine-year-old genius who has an insatiable curiosity about everything.

“Why don’t you walk me through it,” I suggested. “Just like you would for the people in your community.”

“Good idea. Sometimes I get too wrapped up in the technical specs. Okay, well, in a conventional nuclear power plant you have the uranium fuel ready to go into fission but you keep it just under critical mass with control rods. When you’re ready to generate energy, you raise the control rods so the uranium can mix together, beginning the fission process, which releases heat. That heat in turn boils the water flowing through the reactor, which produces steam, which turns a turbine, generating electricity.”

I nodded. “Not much different from how a coal plant works—except for the whole nuclear meltdown potential.”

Elizabeth shot me a stern glance, so I shut up. We were here to learn about Grandel’s plant, not to debate sustainable energy.

“More than electricity, Colleton Landing generates radioactive atoms—isotopes—that doctors use to diagnose and treat disease. And even you’d agree that nuclear power is less toxic to the environment with no CO
₂
emissions and no need to mine the coal.”

Professional that I am, I didn’t ask him how long it would take the nuclear material left over from his plant to decay to safe radiation levels and how he intended to protect the rest of the world from it. He didn’t have the answers—no one did. That was the problem. Same with coal or gas or oil. Everyone worried about what they needed here and now without thinking about the future.

Instead I pointed to the artist’s rendering that graced the front page of the blueprints. “It looks different than the plants I’ve seen.”

Colleton Landing looked, well, I hesitated to use the word aloud, pretty. Compared to traditional plants like Three Mile Island with their massive cooling towers and large buildings housing turbines and the nuclear facility, Colleton Landing looked like a Disney theme park. The drawing showed a large central building with a dome-shaped roof flanked by two graceful wings, sitting on the banks of a wide river and surrounded by forest.

Grandel smiled and nodded, not at me but at the drawing, like a proud father. “Fifteen years of my life went into this design. I won a DOE competition—that’s how I got the money to build, finally.” He caressed the outline with a finger. “Colleton Landing
is
different.” He flipped the page to a cutaway view of the plant’s interior, which resembled a clock face. “Instead of one large containment vessel holding the uranium, we divide it into four separate hot cells placed in a ring bathed by coolant on all sides. This allows us to harvest M-99 from the cells at different times—around the clock, so to speak.”

He chuckled at his inside joke and Elizabeth joined in. I didn’t. “A hot cell is like a small reactor, right? So you have four reactors instead of one? Does that mean you have four times the chance for an accident?”

“Of course not,” he scoffed. “That’s the beauty of my design. We have less chance of an accident than any other plant on the planet. Think of it like a submarine—in fact, our micro-reactors are partly based on the reactors the Russians used in their subs—layers upon layers of airtight doors that can protect the rest of the sub if there’s a breach. If anything, we have four times
more
safety built in.” He tapped the walls separating the hot cells. “Each cell has its own high-pressure containment vessel for the core, then we surround all of them in water nestled within a secondary stainless-steel containment housing. All this sits within an outer concrete chamber strong enough to withstand a direct hit by a 747.”

“But if you have workers accessing four hot cells to harvest the isotopes, doesn’t that multiply the chance for error?”

Now he looked smug. “Not humans. Robots.”

“Robots?” Elizabeth asked.

“Robots. Because we’re partnered with the DOE, we were able to access robotic prototypes the military was working on. All high-risk areas are manned by robots remotely monitored by humans. Not only are the robots more precise and less likely to make mistakes than the humans, but they’re the only ones directly exposed to any possible contamination.”

“So where have the accidents occurred?”

His good humor and pride fled, replaced by a glimpse of fear that was quickly masked. He pointed to some lines on the blueprints. A tangle of pipes streamed between the central dome and the wings on either side. “The first was here. A leaky seal on a containment drain line released a small amount of contaminated water into the ground between the reactor building and the turbine annex before the sensors detected it.”

“The robotic sensors?” I couldn’t resist nettling him. Juvenile, I know.

“Yes. We’re equipped with state-of-the-art sodium iodine detectors. The DOE inspector’s report said they detected it far earlier than any human system would.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I liked people, wasn’t comfortable around machines. Especially not machines smarter than I was. “And the second accident?”

“Simple human error. A crapped-up piece of metal got thrown into the recycling. But our sensors caught it before it left the facility perimeter.”

“Crapped up?”

“Contaminated.”

“So your sensors caught it inside the plant?”

He studied the map as if it held the answers. “Well, no. We caught it here.” He pointed to the inner perimeter fence. “In the recycling truck.”

“Didn’t that contaminate everything in the truck?”

“Yeah. Very low level, though. Nothing dangerous.”

I was beginning to wonder at his definition of “dangerous.”

“The third accident,” he stressed the last word, “was totally unrelated to the first two. A valve stuck and a small amount of water overflowed from the coolant tanks.”

“Overflowed where? Into the river?”

“Oh no. Nothing like that. It backed up into a drain—left standing water on the floor, and a few workers had their shoes exposed.”

He frowned again—more than a frown, a scowl. As if he were being singled out unfairly. Or rather, his plant was. “Since it’s the first of its kind, Colleton Landing has come under more scrutiny than any other plant in the nation. Unlike other places that have
real
problems—like Indian Point, which lost 100,000 gallons of coolant before anyone noticed. Or Vermont Yankee, which has leaked not just tritium but also cesium into the groundwater. And don’t get me started on the mess up in Washington State—workers repeatedly finding new caches of plutonium that the government forgot existed, hundreds of gallons of uranium, plutonium, strontium, and cesium dumped into the Mohawk River. Yet, we’re the ones in the spotlight.”

Wow. Guess I hit a sore spot. But Grandel’s passion was the first thing I’d liked about him since we met. “The investigations have cleared you each time?”

“Yes. In fact, in the first two, both the DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission congratulated us on our prompt and early response and interventions.” He gave his head a small shake, as if wondering at the state of the world. “Of course, the press never mentions our commendations or the part where the DOE calls us a model facility. All they talk about is how negligent we are and the risks to the community.”

Finally he ran out of steam. Both Elizabeth and I were staring at him. He blushed slightly—guess underneath that corporate raider exterior he was human after all. It was nice to see.

“I’d like to learn more about those other incidents in other plants,” I said. “It will give me context.”

“No problem. I have reams of incident reports. I brought them with me.” He nodded to his bulging brief case. “You can read them on the plane.”

“Plane?”

“Sure. I have our Gulfstream waiting.”

Elizabeth and I exchanged glances. “Seems like you were pretty sure we’d help you.”

“Pretty desperate is more like it. I’m involved in very sensitive negotiations with foreign investors. If we don’t prove that we can successfully meet the isotope demand with Colleton Landing and that our plant design poses no public risk, I’ll be ruined.”

“Not to mention all those patients who won’t get the care they need,” Elizabeth added.

“Of course. That’s always a priority. But now you understand why this is so urgent. Any more shutdowns—even if it’s only for a day or two to investigate another mishap—and we’ll be so far behind schedule that we’ll never catch up.”

“I understand and I sympathize,” I said. “But there’s no way I can leave for South Carolina today.”

“Why not?”

He’d never understand. But I had to be honest. “It’s my son’s birthday on Saturday. I can’t miss it.”

Grandel flushed. He wasn’t a man who people said no to, I could tell.

“Saturday? Today’s only Wednesday. How about if you come now and I’ll fly you back Friday? Just give me two days—see what you think. You can keep that retainer whatever you decide. Surely your time is worth a quarter of a million a day?”

He paused and I just stared, not sure if I should slap him for assuming I could be bought at any price or hug him for not walking away from a deal that could secure our future.

Before I could say anything, he continued, “I’ll even sweeten the pot with a bonus—a savings bond in your son’s name. He can use it for college. How’s ten thousand sound?”

The air left my lungs so fast my ears popped. I hated that Grandel
could
buy me—or use David to do it . . . but.... Elizabeth stood behind Grandel, mouthing “one million dollars.”

It was our future—the firm’s, David’s, my entire family’s and Elizabeth’s. How could I refuse?

Pea gravel cracked beneath the crutch’s rubber tip as David leaned his weight onto it. The noise sent a startled squirrel darting up a nearby hemlock, turning to make an accusatory skittering sound as if reprimanding David for being so loud.

“How far is he?” Gram Flora asked from a few yards below him, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun as though she wasn’t almost totally blind.

“Only to the first bend,” her personal care assistant, Jeremy, answered.

“David, that’s far enough,” she called. “Ty, go fetch him back.”

Ty said nothing. Which was why David liked him so much. The sheriff’s deputy rarely said anything unless it would make a difference, and Ty knew full well that David had his mind set on getting to the top of the mountain, all the way up to the lookout at the wishing stone.

David had been working all summer for this, the perfect birthday present. It was his birthday coming up, but he wanted to do something special for his mom. After all, she’d almost died giving birth to him—a fact he’d only learned about recently. All his life Mom had sacrificed and worked hard to take care of him. Now he wanted to give her something that would let her see how far he’d come.

He was going to the top of the mountain. But not in his wheelchair. Oh no. He was
walking
.

With a little help from his crutches, for sure. But still. He was walking to the top.

The sun sizzled off the sweat covering his face. A slight breeze—a tailwind, that was good—helped to keep him from feeling too hot despite his exertion. One foot, then the other. It was painfully slow going, but he couldn’t stop. Not with the image of Mom’s smile of pride when she saw him make it to the top on Saturday floating before him. No way he would quit, let her down.

The second turn of the switch-backed path had him looking back down the ridge to Gram Flora’s house and the smaller cottage known as the summerhouse, where he and Mom had lived ever since they arrived in Scotia a few months ago. Funny. It didn’t seem so long when you looked at the calendar, but it felt like he’d become a whole other person since he’d left D.C.

Guess he was. He’d found and lost a father in the space of a few days. Almost died himself. Met Ty and Ty’s K-9 partner, Nikki. Moved in beside Gram Flora and Jeremy. And was starting to get to know his mother’s parents—but not his father’s, not as much as he’d like. His dad only had a father left, Old Man Masterson. That’s what his mom called his paternal grandfather, usually accompanied by a sour look on her face like she’d forgotten to check the date on the milk before taking a drink but was too polite to spit it out.