by Mark Lemke
CHAPTER 65
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The Old Man opened the airlock to containment and stepped inside for the second time that night.? He knew there were four reactor coolant pumps and that the terrorist had brought two bombs in with him.? Where would he put them?? He put one on the 1-2 reactor coolant pump seal package.? Found and removed.? It was reasonable to assume the second bomb would also be placed on a seal package, but which one?? He didn't have a lot of time to search for it.? Then it occurred to him that before he died, the terrorist tried to escape up the back stairwell.? It might be reasonable to assume that he knew about that stairwell because he'd been down it already.? It was near the 1-4 reactor coolant pump room.? Opposite sides of containment.? It made sense.?
He headed immediately over to the back stairwell and ran all the way down to the 91-foot elevation to the 1-4 reactor coolant pump room.? He was breathing hard.? The heat was incredible, and his aerobic conditioning was good, but only for a man of his age.? He ran inside, looked at the pump seal package, and saw a device strapped to the side of it.? The bomb looked just like the other one.? He looked at the timer immediately, hoping he wouldn't see the same gibberish he saw on the other bomb, but to his horror, that was exactly what he saw. ?As he was looking at it, the timer display went normal and showed six minutes!? Then it changed back to gibberish.? He had only six minutes until it detonated!
He still had Hector's knife, got it out and worked feverishly to cut the device loose.? He had to work fast.? The timer flashed back to normal again and shows five minutes, then gibberish again.? Shit!? He'd never get it out of containment in time.? The heat was starting to affect him now.? His skin had reddened, his fingers felt burned, and he could smell the acrid stench of burned hair.? His breathing was labored and he felt faint.? No matter, he had to get this done.?
He finally got the device cut loose.?
Gibberish - four minutes - gibberish.
He knew the amount of C-4, as a shaped charge, could do considerable damage to what it was attached to, but not if it were out in the open.? The containment structure was seven feet thick at the base, so there was no way this bomb would hurt containment itself.? He just needed to get it away from sensitive equipment.??And then he needed to get away from it.
Gibberish - three minutes - gibberish.
He took the bomb and ran back out of the labyrinth, looking around for a place to put it.? No time!? No time!? The best he could come up with was to put it down on the floor with its back to the concrete wall of the bio-shield, aiming at the outside containment wall 10 feet away.? The explosion would be contained in a localized area of mostly concrete and steel, with little in the way of equipment.? It was the best he could do.?
Gibberish - two minutes - gibberish.
He could run upstairs, but then there'd be nothing between him and the bomb but distance.? He needed shielding, too.? Besides, he was worn out and he knew he wouldn't get too far running upstairs.? All he could do was to put concrete between him and the bomb, and then pray.? He ducked back inside the labyrinth, putting several feet of concrete between him and the bomb.?
Gibberish - one minute - gibberish.
The Old Man sat down on the floor with his back to the wall, and pulled his knees up to his chest, not knowing why, other than it felt like a good defensive posture.? He put his hands over his ears and tried to put his head between his knees as if on an airplane and preparing himself for a crash landing.
Gibberish - twenty seconds - Gibberish.
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Dave was talking with Nick on the phone when the control room recorded a momentary pressure spike in containment.? Normally reading less than one pound of pressure, it spiked to just below the reactor trip set point of three psig.? Dave didn't know it yet, but a bomb had just exploded in the Unit 1 containment of The Headlands Nuclear Power Plant.