The Yellowstone Conundrum (22 page)

Yellowstone National Park

  In the northwestern section of Yellowstone National Park, at the point where the 8 in the park’s highway meets on the western side, called Madison Junction for the fifth president of the United States, James Madison, the man who single-handedly created what is now the United States of America by his forward thinking and sponsorship of the Lewis and Clark expeditions and purchase of half of America’s current territory for the equivalent of two fungo bats and a bag of used baseballs; the caldera continued to erupt, like a red-hot knife through snow-covered butter.   On the interior side the land began to decompose; on the exterior, a wall of flames. 

 
At Madison Junction the gas station was divided straight down the middle, men’s on the outside, ladies on the interior, or fiery side. Of course, there was nothing left of either gender’s bathrooms because of the heat. Flames spit into the morning sky.  Southbound from the rift, ash and molten rock shot high into the air.  The surrounding forest was ablaze, even though snow-shrouded. Animals of all kind ran for their very lives away from the flames.   Above, birds scattered and squawked in all directions away from the rift.

 
The timing of the earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest was so quirky that one might leap to the conclusion that God had a perverse sense of humor, that He deliberately caused the earth to move at 6:20 am just to make things that much more difficult for His people.

 
In Seattle the morning rush hour was in earnest; from the early birds getting the good parking spots downtown, to folks in the suburbs who were hopping onto I-90, I-405, I-5 to do the same.  An earthquake at 3:22 A.M. would have caused as much physical damage, but an Order of Magnitude less emotional damage.

Hanford Nuclear Reservation

Columbia Generating Plant

  In the suburbs of Richland, Washington the same perverse sense of humor could be said about God’s timing at the Columbia Generating Station, formerly WPPSS (whoops!) plant #2, now owned by Northwest Energy, Inc. Six twenty is still on the graveyard shift. No 24-hour company runs a graveyard shift with the same number of people it does on the daytime or evening shift, including Northwest Energy. There were two people instead of four in the Control Room; which is busier during 7:00am-10:00 pm when electricity is mostly used.

 
There was no scheduled PM (preventative maintenance) inside the plant that night, thus fewer people inside the massive structure. There were only four maintenance workers in the cooling tower complex, a supervisor and three workers. The administrative offices were closed until 8:00. Plant security, including guards at the gates and in the perimeter was at full staff, normal for all three shifts. The “dead soldier” field of spent radioactive waste water required nothing more than electronic monitoring as did the old-style single- and double-shelled storage tanks, aging beasts that housed a witches’ brew of toxic waste from 50 years of nuclear energy.

New storage for radioactive materials   

6 large cooling towers

Stock photos, Department of Energy

 
The nuclear industry thought it had the problem of what to do with the radioactive waste products all solved until it was discovered that groundwater ran through Yucca Mountain, 100 miles NW of Las Vegas, much faster than originally thought. For political reasons, construction of the nuclear waste depository was abandoned. Hanford—NW Energy—Columbia Generating Station had to find a practical way to store the mess because in 2007 one of the tanks in the 200 West tank farm began to leak. There were 177 1-million gallon old-style storage tanks at Hanford. Until the politics of nuclear waste storage are figured out, storage of waste water will be done by expanding the “dead soldier” field, upright concrete and steel containers.

Tank farm in 200-W                              Reactor Core

Diagram of process                                                        closeup of cooling tower

 
The tall 50s-style (clunky) buildings house the reactor vessel, the turbine generator, the condensers, the pumps, the miles of pipes and the tons of water inside the pipes.   After going through the generator, the steam passes through a condenser, which cools it and returns it to water form. The hot water (not radioactive) is then passed through one of the adjacent cooling towers, releasing steam into the air. The cooled water is then re-cycled back into the plant to be re-heated to create steam, etc.

 
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?