The God Particle Read Online Free PDF Page B

hard as he
could, dislodging the sludge that had built up around the base of the door. It
opened with some reluctance, revealing a pitch-black interior. The absence of
noise from the diesel generators gave the room an empty presence.
    Turning on his flashlight, Katashi entered and swept the
beam around the building. Apart from the two feet of water he was standing in,
there didn’t appear to be much damage. He trained the light on what he first
thought was a pile of rubble, halfway up the stairs; however, as he moved
closer, he realised it was the crumpled body of Tamotsu. He knew straight away
that he was dead; his head was turned at an impossible angle to his body, his
eyes gazing, blankly, over his right shoulder. The force of the wave must have
knocked him back into the building, breaking his neck instantly. It was a
harrowing sight and, for a moment, Katashi felt the acid in the pit of his
stomach lurch. He concentrated with all his might on not heaving.
    The other two team members were now at Katashi’s side,
snapping him back to reality. They stood there a while in silence, staring down
at their colleague’s limp remains.
    ‘At least he didn’t suffer,’ Katashi murmured in
consolation, more to comfort himself than the others.
    His body then stiffened. ‘We’ve got a job to do, otherwise
Tamotsu won’t be the last casualty. We need to restore power to the cooling
pumps before we have a total meltdown on our hands.’ He looked around at his
colleagues. ‘You two, take Tamotsu’s body into the containment chamber,’ he
ordered. ‘We’ll pay our respects later, when we have more time!’ Then he turned
and waded across the room to the generators.
    The enormous Lister diesel engines, which were the
powerhouse of the generated backup electricity supply, sat in twelve inches of
water; however, Katashi could tell, by the distinct tidemark on the wall, that
they must have been fully submersed at some point. He knew it would be futile,
but he tried to restart the engines anyway, using the automatic ignition.
    He pressed the red button and the turbines churned over,
spluttered, and then died. He tried again, several times, but to no avail;
saltwater had obviously got into the system. He knew he would have to strip the
engines down, dry the individual parts, and reassemble them. But that would
take time, and time was something the Fukushima power plant was fast running
out of.
    The only hope they had was to use the ‘third-line’ backup
power, whilst Katashi worked to fix the diesel generators. The third-line
backup supply was a bank of fifty batteries, in principle much the same as a
standard car battery, except much larger and far more powerful. These were
located in the containment chamber to protect them from the weather.
    ‘Switch over to the battery backup!’ Katashi shouted up to
his two colleagues.
    Within seconds, the huge pumps began to whir into action. It
was now a race against time to get the diesel engines working, before the
batteries exhausted themselves.
     
    ***
     
    It had taken twelve hours to get the generators in Reactor 1
back on the grid, while those in Reactor 3 had only taken him just over eight;
he’d worked quickly with knowledge gained from the previous one. Both reactors’
cores were now cooling down as they were designed to do.
    Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case in Reactor 5; the core
temperature was rising to a critical level. Unless power to the pumps was
restored, the temperature of the fuel rods would continue to rise until they
melted, pooling at the bottom of the reactor vessel. It would then just be a
matter of time before the pressure built up to such an extent that the
containment chamber would explode, creating an atomic shockwave, four hundred
times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
    The backup batteries powering the pumps had run out two
hours previously, at which point Katashi had ordered the rest of his team and
the skeleton staff left behind to