by <unknown>
In addition, the reconstruction project also included the expansion of the fuel depot's capacity and the improvement of the water supply, power supply, and other guaranteed facilities.
After the reconstruction, the aerodrome code of the new Walvis Bay International Airport would be upgraded from the original 3C to 4D. It would also be upgraded from the second-largest official airport in Namibia to the largest airport in the country.
It would only be able to accommodate the coming and going of Tara Strategic Resource's dozens of transport planes after more runways had been built.
With the market established by the previous Tara Company, once the transport aircraft went into operation, they immediately received orders from various countries including Somalia, Congo, the Central African Republic, and Sudan. They were to transport all sorts of supplies to these countries that had been ravaged by wars throughout the year.
In addition, the new Tara Company also dispatched armored vehicles and attack helicopters to those areas in the name of humanitarian assistance, helping the government in suppressing the rebelling forces. Due to its swift, strict organizational discipline and its supreme combat proficiency, it received unanimous praise from customers all over the world.
The previous Tara Private Security Company had created many legendary records of winning more by using less —
For example, during the civil strife in Sierra Leone, the rebel army "Revolutionary United Front" had attacked fiercely, causing the government forces to retreat steadily. The government had no choice but to sign a two-year contract with Tara Company, which then sent 300 mercenaries to assist the government forces in combat.
Within a few months, the rebel army was wholly defeated and had to sign a peace agreement with the government army.
On one local battlefield only, Tara Company, with just 60 mercenaries, fought off the one-week assault of the Sierra Leone rebel army which had more than a thousand troops.
In another case, Tara Company once sent a small mercenary force to Rwanda, managing to subdue the crisis in Rwanda within a few days and easily earned tens of millions of USD.
As another example, after the Angolan government had signed a contract with Tara, the local rebels could not withstand the pressure and had to agree to a negotiation. The Angolan government paid 60 million USD for this and the price paid by Tara at the time was only the deaths of 20 mercenaries.
Tara Company had continually created amazing records not because of the elite skills of the company's mercenaries, but because their opponents were too weak.
In the African Continent, the opponents of Tara Company would be a group of ordinary people without professional training. Among them, there were even some children under the age of ten. These children had barely learned how to shoot before they were sent to the frontlines with a rusty AK-47.
On the other hand, Tara Private Security Company were backed by armored vehicles and attack helicopters, and the mercenaries were also retired special forces who had received good military training. In particular, this group of mercenaries adhered to one principle throughout all their battles —
Never step into a combat area without helicopter fire support.
Today, Chen Chen continued wielding his dominance in terms of equipment. The company's old-fashioned armored vehicles and attack helicopters had been packaged and sold to African governments. The new equipment was the K Boomerang K-17 Infantry Fighting Vehicle imported from the North Sea Continent and the Mi-28N Attack Helicopter.
Even putting aside the performance of these weapons produced in the North Sea Continent, at the very least, they were astonishingly effective in crushing the native armies in Africa.
In terms of remuneration, Chen Chen did what the previous company had done. If these countries had no money to pay with, they could use diamonds and various rare metals as a substitute or even the mining rights of rare metal mines.
This was why Chen Chen had reorganized the company into a strategic resource company with three businesses: mining, air transportation, and security. The mining of these resources was much more valuable than any payment in USD.
To cope with the massive market in Africa, Chen Chen even sent out the first batch of 50 Black Knights and before the second batch of three hundred Black Knights was born, he added a third batch of Black Knights, numbering over a thousand.
In the Spire Experimental Base, a clone factory was built.
This factory was like a small building, divided into three floors. Each of these floors could accommodate five hundred life incubators. At this point, dozens of scientific researchers throughout the entire factory were constantly bustling about with the help of machines, looking after these fetus-like newborn clones.
Some time ago, Li Lei and Hannibal's technology had another breakthrough. The use of several growth hormones and a sufficient supply of calcium and protein, at a certain fixed ratio, could accelerate the birth of human clones. They would initially have taken a year to attain an adult body — this was cut short to half a year.
In other words, the 1,300 Black Knight clones here could become Chen Chen's new combat force in only half a year at most.
The reason so many clone fighters were needed was that Chen Chen was in a period of rapid development. Thus, construction and development were needed everywhere.
For example, the underground laboratory was originally built by a private construction team from Mainland China. To keep it a secret, those people were guarded 24 hours a day during the construction period and they were not allowed to communicate with the outside world. The price Chen Chen had to pay was, therefore, three times the usual salary plus multiple appeasements.
Money was not the issue. The point was that humans were not machines, after all. During the construction process, there were two instances of information leaks. Fortunately, Little X was monitoring the place, so the information was taken down by Little X as soon as it was posted on the Internet. After that, the ones who had leaked the information naturally ended up disappearing from the face of the earth.
Moreover, the longer the work went on, the lower the efficiency of these construction teams. There were even incidents of panic and strikes, and it took a lot of effort to appease everyone.
After the construction of the underground laboratory was completed, all of them underwent a procedure to erase their memories here.
Although the project succeeded in the end, Chen Chen, who had gone through many twists and turns, understood very well that ordinary construction teams were ultimately unreliable.
Furthermore, this was just an underground experimental base with a small amount of engineering. Would it not be even more troublesome if he wanted to build a larger secret military base in the Antarctic continent in the future?
Therefore, Chen Chen was preparing to establish a construction and engineering team by himself. The employees would be the clones who were always hard-working and who did not need any wages while working at peak efficiency.
With these clones, both the efficiency and the confidentiality of the company would be greatly improved. They could be said to be the cheapest labor force. Even if they were attacked, they could pick up weapons and instantly transform themselves into deadly killing machines.
These were the Black Knights that, in Chen Chen's plan, would become an engineering unit as well as a combat force.
Chapter 184: Nuclear Power Plant Completed |
Chen Chen sat in the Jeep Wrangler and quietly looked out the window.
On the horizon, four huge chimneys could be seen silently towering above the horizon like pillars of heaven.
However, Chen Chen knew that these were not chimneys but cooling towers of a nuclear power plant.
Logically, a nuclear power plant built by the sea would not need cooling towers. Instead, it would use a direct cooling method by directly extracting seawater for cooling, then discharging the seawater which had absorbed the heat back into the ocean.
After all, the ocean itself
had a massive volume of water. The water quality and temperature would not change just because of a small amount of discharge. Thus, this would save costs.
This was why most nuclear power plants were planned to be built by the sea.
As for these cooling towers, they were the result of a compromise. Chen Chen and the Ministry of Environmental Protection of Namibia had reached an agreement that, to prevent accidents at the nuclear power plant, Blacklight Biotechnology's nuclear power plant would have two heat dissipation systems, namely, direct cooling using seawater and cooling through condensation towers.
Currently, Chen Chen was rushing toward the completed nuclear power plant.
After eighteen months of construction, the Blacklight Nuclear Power Plant had finally reached completion and ready to begin its trial operation.
On both sides of the road, there were high-voltage transmission towers every hundred meters. These thirty-meter-tall iron towers extended all the way from the nuclear power plant to the Eco Science City, then continued toward Walvis Bay, Swakopmund, and coastal towns such as Wlotzkasbaken. These towers formed a unique thread that ran throughout the landscape of the African wilderness.
Once the nuclear power plant started to generate electricity, it would be able to transmit this electricity to thousands of households.
The road used for construction, which was once extremely busy, was now completely deserted after the completion of the nuclear power plant. After all, the road ended at the Blacklight Nuclear Power Plant. No one would set foot here except for the employees of Blacklight Biotechnology and tourists.
As they got closer to the four cooling towers that were like pillars of heaven, Chen Chen gradually saw the gate of the nuclear power plant. At this time, a big red banner had been hung over the gate of the nuclear power plant. Upon it, in white font, were the words "Celebrating the official completion of the Blacklight Biotechnology Nuclear Power Plant in Namibia".
At the gate, the leaders of the engineering team were waiting outside, ready to welcome Chen Chen.
A high-level big shot from China National Nuclear Corporation had arrived for the launch of the trial operation.
After Chen Chen's motorcade stopped before the gate, Chen Chen slowly got out of the car. At the gate, the group from the engineering team came up to him.
"Boss Chen, congratulations!"
As soon as Chen Chen got off the car, before he had even found his footing, the bald Chinese man at their head was already approaching while enthusiastically stretching out both hands. "Boss Chen, congratulations on the completion of your nuclear power plant!"
"Not at all. I wouldn't have been able to build this nuclear power plant without your help, Director Wang, and your construction team."
Chen Chen flashed a bright wide smile. "I should be thanking you."
"Hahaha, then let's thank and congratulate each other!" The bald man tossed his head up and guffawed.
As the two of them talked, several reporters next to them kept taking photos as their cameras clicked incessantly. Chen Chen glanced at them. The tags of these reporters all bore the letters "CCTV".
"Come, come, I won't babble on any longer. Let me bring you around the internal facilities of the nuclear power plant."
The bald man led the way enthusiastically. "Also, at twelve noon, we'll perform the ceremony of filling the nuclear fuel rods and officially begin the trial operation!"
"I'll leave that to you then, Director Wang."
Chen Chen nodded his thanks. He walked into the nuclear power plant, followed by the clicking sounds of cameras.
"The Blacklight Nuclear Power Plant covers an area of fifteen square kilometers, of which the length is five kilometers and the width is three kilometers. It consists of 42 large and small buildings including the five zones: the nuclear island, routine areas, supporting facilities, safety measures for the nuclear power plant, and the living area."
As they walked, the bald man pointed things out to Chen Chen and explained, "Look, the largest building before us is the living area. The living area has a dedicated staff dormitory as well as a canteen and a recreation area. With this, you can have five thousand employees working and living here…
"This huge building built by the sea, half of which extends into the seawater, is the safety area of the nuclear power plant. It can facilitate heat exchange between seawater and boiling water at a rate of more than 100 cubic meters per second, thus bringing down the excess temperature."
Chen Chen nodded.
Seawater, despite being full of impurities, could be directly used to dissipate heat because the seawater was not involved in any operation regarding power generation. Instead, it was circulated in the pipeline as a type of coolant.
The power generation principle of this nuclear power plant built by Chen Chen was that the nuclear fission would generate heat energy, after which pressurized water would transfer the heat energy out. After that, the generator would generate steam to rotate the steam turbines and generate electricity.
The water vapor that drove the steam turbine to rotate would then come into contact with these pipes filled with seawater. When it was abruptly cooled, it would condense and become pure water again, then return to the nuclear reactor for cyclic heating.
Therefore, the seawater did not need to participate in any power generation operations, only serving as a coolant for the water vapor, without causing any pollution.
"Look, this is the core of the nuclear power plant — the nuclear island area."
After the bald man's explanations that lasted throughout the journey, he finally led Chen Chen into the core building complex of the nuclear power plant.
As the name suggested, the nuclear island was like a building similar to an island. Chen Chen followed Director Wang into the building, turned around various corners, and reached the second floor, where they entered the observation room of the nuclear reactor.
The nuclear power plant built by Chen Chen contained two nuclear reactors. At this moment, this was the observation and control room for nuclear reactor No. 1.
In the observation control room, presently, there were already more than a dozen staff members sitting in front of the controls. At the front of the observation room was a massive window wall about five meters long and three meters high.
"These floor-to-ceiling windows are made of the international standard, ZF6-grade heavy protective lead glass," the bald man said as he pointed to the glass window. "The walls also have lead compartments. You don't have to worry about any radiation as you stand here."
Chen Chen looked through the window and immediately saw a huge tower-shaped machine installation behind the glass. Dozens of workers in nuclear protective suits were ceaselessly examining and tweaking the equipment, looking extremely busy.
"The people inside are counting the nuclear fuel rods."
The bald man explained, "The pressurized water reactors in Mainland China have always used uranium dioxide. The uranium dioxide is packed in a zirconium tube with a diameter of only one centimeter to make a 4-meter-long fuel rod."
Chen Chen smiled. "I know all about this. 312 fuel rods make up one fuel rod assembly."
"Yes, this nuclear reactor divides the nuclear fuel rods into 3 batches and each batch is replaced after 12 months."
The bald man explained. After that, he looked at the time and changed the subject. "Boss Chen, it's almost noon now. Should we have lunch in the cafeteria first or install the nuclear fuel rods and begin the trial operation?"
"Let's just begin now." Chen Chen nodded after some thought.
"Okay, let's start then!"
After Chen Chen gave his order, the operator in the control room instantly relayed the order to those at the reactor. A few employees, using crane-like operating machines, lifted bundles of four-meter-long fuel rods and placed them into the nuclear reactor.
Chapter 185: Successful Trial Operation |
"Circuit injection!"
"Heating experiment comm
encing…"
"Heating experiment successful!"
"The reactor pressure is 25 MPa. It has reached the predetermined parameter!"
…
Following that, Chen Chen watched these employees continue to perform their busy operations. Rows of data were constantly generated, becoming indicators for the generation of power.
After more than an hour of operation, the operating staff came over with pages on which dense lines of data were printed. "Report — experiments have shown no incidents of stack or unit tripping. The maximum shaft vibration of the steam turbine generator is 26.1 microns and the generator's rate of hydrogen leaking is 5.4Nm3/d. The meter input rate, protection input rate, and automatic input rate are all at 100%!"
The bald man took the papers and looked at them, then nodded to Chen Chen.
Chen Chen said, "In that case, get ready to commence the full-load trial operation."
According to the plan of this nuclear power plant, the first trial operation would be at full load, during which it would run for a total of 168 hours. As long as everything went smoothly during the trial operation, it could then be officially put into use.
As for the staff of the nuclear power plant, Chen Chen had relied on the method of renting and training. First, he rented a group of engineers from China National Nuclear Corporation to get the nuclear power plant up and running, then asked these people to help train Chen Chen's own employees.
Of course, these employees would only maintain the operations of the nuclear power plant. Chen Chen was also going to recruit a group of technical personnel from around the world to deal with possible failures in the nuclear power plant in the future.
In the following period, Chen Chen made sure the engineers were well taken care of. After seven days had passed and the trial operation was over, Chen Chen then sent them away from Namibia.
The success of the trial operation meant that the nuclear power plant could officially enter the stage of commercial operation.