by John Randall
Unbeknownst (another excellent word, like asunder) to everyone on the Hanford Reservation, one hundred two of the 177 single- and double-shell nuclear storage tanks had cracked like thin-shelled eggs. The tanks in the 200 West farm—located as far away from civilization on the Hanford Reservation as possible—were now million-gallon piles of radioactive goo; Cesium-137, Strontium-90, Barium-137, Radium-226, Uranium-238 and 239, which when decays produces Neptunium-239, finally good ‘ol Plutonium-239. Were there explosions? Of course there were.
Duh.
While many of the now-freed tanks were too stupefied to explode, twenty of them exploded as the pressure inside the tanks were released, like the force that sends a bullet on its way down the gun barrel, or a gross pimple bursting toxic goo.
Seen from the fifteen-mile distance from 200 West to the Columbia Generating Station’s plant on the banks of the Columbia River, the sky became a kaleidoscope of vibrant reds, oranges, purples, indigos, with streaks of yellow sulfur. It was enough to make you poop in your pants. You sure hated to be a “downwinder” in Grant County across the river because after forty years you were going to be proven right. Unfortunately, you were probably also going to be dead in a short while.
“Leon, we need to get out of here, now!” Andy shouted. “Nobody is coming to help us. We’re going to die if we don’t get out of here! I’m not going to die for the fucking electric company.” Andy was soaked in his own sweat. “I’m going to open the emergency locker if I can find it.”
“Man, I don’t know,” replied an unsure Leon, not sure of what to do but sure that if he fucked up he’d be out of a job and a possible pension. Doing nothing was the best bet. It’s government property, Andy.”
The only sounds in the dark room were those from Andy Everett who stumbled his way across the room and felt his way underneath the control panel desk—a U-shaped built-in that encompassed three sides of the room, above which were all of the 60’s toggles and switches, amber screens and early LED displays. It was crazy. It was 2013 and he was trapped in Beaver Cleaver land.
There were several shits, a couple of damns and fucks before Andy Everett reached his objective. “Mother-fucker!” Andy shouted, obviously animated.
“Andy, what are you doing, man?” asked Leon, anxiously in the dark.
“The door has to come down, Leon,” said a determined Andy Everett.
“But, they’ll let--”
“There’s no ‘they’, Leon, just ‘us’”, Andy started whacking at the door with a fire ax. The door led from the Power Control Room to the containment building, the door to which already felt warm.
Hack, hack, hack, hack. The door was feeling some pain. A faint sound of Klaxons could be heard the further the effort was made on the door. On the other side all hell was breaking loose. The Power Control Room was an isolation booth; the name of the room had been turned into an oxymoron. There was no power. No primary power. And, what the hell happened to emergency power?
“Nobody’s here but us, Leon! They’re all gone! This place has gone to shit! We’re going to die if we don’t get out of here!” shouted 29-year old Andy Everett.
Leon was frozen, incapable of action. His 25-year undistinguished career was on the line. Go with Andy and risk being cited for not trusting The System, for not trusting what he’d been told over and over again.
Furiously Andy continued to chop at the door with the pick ax, at first attacking the door itself, then the lock, then the side of the door, then the lock again. Failing that, he climbed onto the desk and began to whack away at the sides of the wall around the door. Andy was driven by fear. I don’t want to die. Sometimes in real life people get lucky. Andy got lucky. Perhaps it was God’s payback for being confined in the locker for 18 hours, but on his third pass through the door’s jam, the pick on his pick ax hit the absolute right spot on the door lock. Boing. The door shuddered but unjammed, enough for him to insert the ax and pry the door open an inch at a time. Now mother-fucker was the adjective/noun of the day. Sometimes it was used as an adverb.
As soon as the door was opened a crack, Andy could hear the Klaxons inside the containment building. Why on earth Klaxons were used was beyond him. If the core was in trouble, didn’t the planners think that people would understand that they were in deep trouble? The Klaxon horns made conversation impossible and thinking barely possible; but the horns were hardly scary when compared to the acrid smell of smoke coming from the containment vessel. Something was burning out of control. Andy’s vision did a 280 degree sweep. Where was maintenance? Where were the emergency crews?
Power was out inside the building, the only light coming from the reactor core and the fire somewhere below. Stepping back into the Power Control Room, Andy fumbled under the desk, finally locating the handle of an industrial-sized flashlight. Back out into the smoky, eerie, strangely-lit cavernous room, Andy turned his flashlight toward the exterior wall. Not even the exit lights were illuminated. There! The light splayed and found an emergency exit.
Inside the reactor vessel the 180 boron rods had already been withdrawn in the first seven minutes; the automatic shutdown process had started. The problems were; the steam lines in the reactor core had been breached, the transmission ties on the exterior of the building were collapsed, the facility was without exterior power, four of the six-foot pipes leading to the cooling stations were broken and hot water was spilling onto the desert floor. Without additional water—massive amounts of it, the system would shut down properly but the radioactive material would start a meltdown; and nobody knew what would happen. Would it simply bore a hole into the earth and spread out on the desert floor? Or, would it burn and then explode in a nuclear reaction, probably with enough force to kill every living thing within 50 miles. Nobody knew. One thing they did know; the groundwater in the tri-county area (formerly known as the tri-county area of Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick) would be irradiated and un-drinkable at least until Star Date 2258 when Captain Kirk would assume control of the starship Enterprise.
This was a disaster. The first thing you learn when taking a First Aid class is; is it safe for you to help? Are you going to be hurt or die if you help? If not, don’t; a simple rule to live by. Andy gave a quick look back at Leon; the pair exchanged eyes. I’m staying. My career. My pension. I’m supposed to man my station.
Andy’s eyes said bullshit, locked for an instant, and then he ran. The huge 10-story building was nothing more than a giant shell over the top of the reactor. Incredibly, some of the water pipes were above ground.
It was 150 feet from the Control Room to the nearest exit, white lights lead to red lights. Andy ran up to the first door at the edge of the 10-story building marked “NOT AN EXIT, SECURITY ONLY, ALARMS WILL SOUND, pounded his way through the one-way door and found himself on the outside of the large block-like building. This wasn’t protocol. The entire area was being whacked with Klaxon horns. Andy looked up. Jesus Mother Mary and all the Saints. The morning sky to the west was red with fireworks, only Andy knew better. The fat missiles into the morning sky weren’t fireworks; they were explosions from the 200-West tank farm.
Not only was the Columbia Generating facility under severe stress, so was the entire so-called system. We’d already passed the point of going to hell in a hand basket, Andy thought.
Time to save yourself, Andy-boy.
The parking places at the Columbia Generating Facility were designated according to rank. The peon maintenance workers took the bus from the main gate, fifteen miles away, as did guards (probably why they were so constantly surly) and admin nerds; a large parking was available outside the main Richland guard station, with regular shuttle service to all the stations inside. If you were a guard at the 200-West tank farms, you had a 45-minute bus ride; that’s once you got to the main parking lot; which meant you added 1.5 hours onto your schedule just to get to and from work—once you got to work. It sucked but that was the government for you. We couldn’t have every Tom, Dick and Harriet driving around the facility in hi
s own vehicle.
Even though he was lower than whale shit, Andy was lucky to have his own parking lot; third shift, Power Control Center, important man. If he’d been anyone else, he’d be waiting at the guard’s station to catch the bus back to the bus station, and good luck waiting for the white bus this morning.
The Department of Energy’s Regional office in Richland was flattened. The Fast Flux Test Facility, lab and museum was virtually demolished because of the earthquakes.
Worse, the Priest Rapids Dam upstream from Hanford had been breached, virtually snapped in two. It would take several hours but the water from the impounded Columbia River at the dam would chew a hole through the center of the dam, enough that by the end of the day Priest Rapids Lake would be free-flowing down the Columbia River. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men would not put the Priest Rapids Dam back together again. The water would soon flow uncontrolled around the Hanford Reach, a section of the river that is free-flowing and uncontrolled already. It would not be good news for the Columbia Generating Plant, which would by the end of February 21stfind the banks of the Columbia River overflowing onto the Hanford Reservation, its primary target the nuclear plant on the western shores of the river.
Priest Rapids Dam north of Hanford, NOAA photo
Andy took a quick 360 of where he was. Directly ahead in the distance the sky was red and orange; in the near distance the guard’s gate was empty; behind him the containment building was in deep shit, to his left the road to the admin offices was empty. Overhead the morning had slowly slopped its way into the Northwest, low crud clouds above. The sounds were terrible with the Klaxons, which did nothing for team performance; let’s all get together and pull for the home team except for those fucking WWII Klaxon alarms.
He started to walk around the western side of the reactor building, knowing full well the end of the earth was in progress inside, then started to jog toward the parking lot on the other side of the building, then finally started to run for his fucking life. He was 29 and didn’t want to die. He knew what was advancing from the west, certain death. It didn’t matter what the hell happened inside the reactor, maybe by some miracle the reactor core wouldn’t melt down, it just didn’t matter. Within an hour the entire building, the Columbia River, and Downwinders in Adams County on the eastern side of the river were going to be drenched in good ‘ol Strontium-90 and Plutonoium-239.
Chorus
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Now hear the word of the Lord.
Verses
Toe bone connected to the foot bone
Foot bone connected to the leg bone
Leg bone connected to the knee bone
From Ezekiel 37:1-14
James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)
Andy’s jogging pace turned to a desperate run as he realized he was all alone. Jesus, do I have my keys? Yes! I do! What a bugger that would be if his keys were in his...(jacket?). Andy stopped up short and felt his right pants pocket. Thank you God, keys! His keys weren’t back in the power control room along with specialist Leon Holt, now frozen into Lot’s Wife. Andy continued forward car-yes-car-open-fumble-ignition-on-YES! Reverse, then squeal, tread pealing in two black strips behind him. The heavily guarded gate to the building was empty. The rats have abandoned ship. Through the gate he rushed. The sight in front of him made him want to puke. The morning sky was illuminated with thick rocket’s glare, not of fireworks but of 50 years of pent-up radioactive crud. It was a lead-pipe cinch that within two hours the 200-West tank farms would begin to drop their load of radioactive debris onto the Columbia Generating Station, and an hour later onto the Adams County farms across the river, then wherever God wanted to bring death to America.
Everyone was going to die a painful, horrible death. If someone wanted to design a death that would bring fear, excruciating pain, and the ability to watch your own insides ooze out of your body before you were dead; radiation poisoning was that choice. And the poison wasn’t God made, it was man-made. God didn’t design power control rooms and reaction chambers, man did it to himself.
Andy had already fired missiles one and two into his pants before he jumped into his red 2007 Jeep Wrangler. As he sped southward on Red Route 1 toward the Hanford front gate, eyes ever glancing to the west through his right passenger window, he tried to gather his thoughts—let’s get home, get my passport, my check book, my computer(s), my money in the hidey hole. Then he realized; this is what everyone else is going to do. I’m in an end-of-the-world situation; the Northwest US has been butt-fucked. My job is done, there’s not going to be any more paychecks; you’re on your own, dude.
It was fifteen miles from the Columbia Generating Station to the main entrance to Hanford. The closer he got to the gate the worse he began to feel. That gate is going to be so fucked. People coming in for the morning shift; a rush of people coming out; Klaxons ringing; stop the people from leaving; red skies in the morning. The main gate to Hanford was a dug-in kind of stop; complete with reverse tire fuckers, iron pylons that prevented any access from one side to the other, a ten-foot tall double strip of cyclone fence with barbed wire that stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction.
Andy came to a stop. This wasn’t going to work. Everybody and his brother Max were going to try to leave through the front gate. Choice 1—turn left and try to get through 300 Area—home of the motherfuckers who thought of all this radioactive bombing crap, Battelle Labs, the cock-sucking motherfuckers who urged the US government to try this, try that; finally convincing not one but five US Presidents that they were smarter. Battelle and Rand, twin cocksuckers joined at the butthole.
The road through 300 Area went through a time warp of US history, back to the development of The Bomb and What to Do with It. History would say they were all cocksuckers.
The choice through the 300 Area was grim. A race to the end of land, down a 20-foot embankment, then a brisk swim of 300 yards across a free-flowing major river (The Columbia); of course, it was the end of February and not the end of July. Get across the Columbia by swimming, or floating downstream, and re-emerge on the Adams County side or further down to the Benton County side. Regardless, you’re naked, you’re soaked, it’s 22 degrees outside and massive clouds of radioactive crap is about to descend upon your bones.
OK, we won’t do the river thing.
I hate it when I’m right.
In the distance ahead Andy saw the brake lights of what seemed like a thousand automobiles, all jammed at the main entrance. Slamming on his breaks, Andy spun the Jeep around and headed back up the route he’d come from. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The red plumes in the distance seemed much closer. Two miles back toward the Columbia Generating Station, Andy whirled to the left and headed toward the Fast Flux facility, the plant where decades of research had been done on what do to with the damned crap residue from nuclear power generation. Andy sped past the newer facility and out into the desert to the west. To his right the angry explosions from the 200-West and now the 200-East tank farms continued to billow into the morning sky.
Just then a tank exploded that had the right combination of juice. The sky to the north was lit up with a wide-angle explosion, as if God was saying “Hey, let’s don’t forget Oregon!”
Andy sped across the center of the Hanford Reservation from Area 400 toward the western gate, which he knew would be much less crowded; although only fifteen miles to the south, the western gate was out of the downwind path of the radioactive death field. But it would be just a matter of time before the gate would be inundated with crazy people.
When Andy arrived at the gate there were eight cars on the inside. A single guard stood watch at the kiosk. A crowd of workers, at least half partially clothed in moon suit material. Everyone was screaming. The guard wasn’t letting anyone out. Needless to say, no one was pounding on the door on the other sid
e demanding to be let into the nuclear reservation. The crisp, bright blue morning sky was dramatically painted with the reds, oranges, purples and yellows of the exploding tanks. The desert sky above the reservation up to two thousand feet looked like a remnant of a space launch at Kennedy, with the exception that there were ten plumes instead of one.
The single guard was brandishing his weapon, an older M-16 A4 assault rifle. While the Army and Marines had already started issuing M4 and M4A1 semi-automatic; lighter weight, easily accessorized with night vision devices, grenade launcher, shorter and lighter; guards at domestic nuclear plants were lower on the totem pole.
The loudspeakers squealed—squelched—then came on.
“Good afternoon. This is the President of the United States. Three hours ago our lives were irrevocably interrupted by a volcanic explosion in Wyoming, an event that will affect virtually every family—every person—in America, and abroad. For those of you listening, and the few seeing me this afternoon, understand that we all are in this together.”
“Let us out!” the crowd demanded.
“You can’t keep us here!”
Andy found himself shouting. “That’s 200-West over there!” he pointed. “And that’s 200-East!” he pointed to an area in the horizon approximately half-way between 200-West and the Columbia Generating Plant.
“First the facts; many years ago the land we know as Yellowstone National Park was a giant volcano, thousands of feet high. Three hundred thousand years go the volcano collapsed and formed a caldera, the center of the volcano—the land we know to be Yellowstone National Park.”
The group trapped on the inside was having nothing to do with the guard, who resolutely defended his station. You had to feel for the young man, who had no telephone, no computer and no power to his kiosk.
“This morning the caldera has exploded and continues to explode; first in the Old Faithful Village area, then raggedly across the high mountain area into Idaho, and back to Wyoming, then north into Montana. An earthquake of 11.2—the highest ever recorded has caused ash to be spewed into the atmosphere. This ash will be carried by normal weather patterns across the country, then across the Atlantic, then across the Europe and Asia, finally back to the US.”