One frigid February night, Mark wandered outside the plant trying to clear his head after a marathon studying session. The next morning he was to be observed as Engineering Officer of the Watch conducting casualty drills. If he performed well, his nuclear power training would be successfully completed. If he failed, his nuclear aspirations would be ended. He hadn’t left the site in twenty-four hours, and planned on studying through the night, right up until the moment he took the watch in maneuvering. He was stressed, exhausted, and fairly certain that some of the mumbling he heard inside the large, common study area was audible only to him.
He paused at the high fence that surrounded the resistor bank. He could see where the insulated cables came out of the fake hull, channeling electricity into the resistors. I=V/R, Ohm’s Law, flashed into his head, the cornerstone of electrical theory. Like all the other ensigns at the site, he could rapidly and accurately calculate in his head what current would flow through the resistors at a given power level, how many shaft horsepower that translated to, and how much heat would be generated by the resistors as it absorbed that power. Because it was so cold, he could actually feel the heat coming off of the resistors; it felt good on his face as his back turned cold in the chilly night; it even smelled pleasantly warm, like a campfire, something Mark had never noticed before during midnight walks around the installation.
That’s when Mark noticed that a long, thin oak branch had fallen from the surrounding trees and landed atop the resistors; what he smelled was the unmistakable aroma of wood being heated to its burning point. There were no trees directly over the resistor bank, but the branch was covered in dried, curly leaves. It must have snapped off in the cold and glided over from the surrounding woods like a paper airplane, landing exactly where it would do the most harm. Mark couldn’t do anything himself because of the fence; the branch was unreachable. He immediately turned, intending to run to the nearest phone and alert the Engineering Officer of the Watch.
But…he stopped.
He watched the branch in a kind of trance, thinking that it was not unlike an experiment Naval Reactors might conjure up, to see what the consequences of a branch falling on the resistor bank might be. He pictured a chart in a Reactor Plant Manual charting the temperature of a wooden branch versus time on a logarithmic graph, a bold horizontal line indicating the auto-ignition temperature of dried leaves. For a few minutes, he thought maybe nothing would happen. But then white smoke began to curl away from some of the leaves, and he smiled as the nostalgic, pungent aroma wafted over him. Then a few of them burst into flame, then, almost simultaneously, all of them were on fire.
The branch burned quickly, and settled into the resistor bank as it fell apart and turned to ash; the crevices between resistors and wires showed vividly in the orange flames. Soon Mark began to smell the sour, acrid smell of an electrical fire, and a few pops came from the resistors as wiring melted and shorted out. Resin inside the resistors melted and dribbled down the side, like gore from a wounded animal. A minute more, and he heard the KA CHUNK of large circuit breakers tripping, one right by his feet, that made him jump, and one just inside the hull. A bleating alarm sounded inside the hull, and he heard a muted, concerned announcement of the casualty from inside. He wandered away from the resistor bank, and took the long way back to the classroom where he’d been studying.
The next morning, crews were cutting down every tree within five feet of the outer fence line, and the plant was shut down while they all had training on the incident, and discussed the seriousness of what had happened: a reactor that is creating energy and then suddenly has no place for that energy to go. It could lead, they all reviewed, to soaring temperatures, protective actions, damaged fuel. They all worked through equations to calculate the rate and the extent of the potential damage.
Mark had to wait two days for repairs to the resistor bank to have his observed watch; he combated simulated flooding and recovered from an actual scram. He passed with solid marks. He didn’t let the branch incident bother him for more than a few days. After all, it wasn’t like he’d thrown the branch onto the resistors, there would have been a fire even if he’d never gotten near it: his presence there was a coincidence. And all the reactor’s protective mechanisms had worked properly, protecting it from any damage. He graduated third in his class and received orders to the USS City of Corpus Christi. On his way to the west coast, he stopped in his hometown of Lansing, Michigan to marry Muriel, his high school sweetheart.
Mark loved Muriel, but he told her nothing about the fears he had for his own sanity. It was easy to keep from her at first. When they’d dated in high school and during trips home from the Academy, he’d been fine. Muriel was a tough woman, a realist, and Mark knew if he told her, she would immediately seek help, help that would result inevitably in the end of his career. And, in a way, keeping Muriel in the dark made him feel better, just as fooling the Navy shrinks had. Muriel was smart, and perceptive. If she couldn’t tell that Mark was crazy…well then, he must not be that crazy. Of course, when she finally realized everything, he had to leave her. A wife telling the Navy that her husband was crazy was one thing. But a spurned wife telling the Navy that her ex-husband was a nut…the Navy would have to shut down if it listened to every allegation hurled by an ex-wife.
Everyone told junior officers that as demanding as the nuclear power training was, going to sea was harder. When he arrived on his first boat, the USS City of Corpus Christi, it had just begun a refueling overhaul in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. For his entire tour, the boat never left drydock; he had to be loaned out to other ships around Puget Sound to complete his at-sea qualifications.
He completed them with aplomb, pinned on his gold dolphins, received top marks on his fitness reports, and screened for department head with flying colors. The overhaul was demanding and stressful, but Mark got through the entire tour without an episode. He began to think again that he had healed. He did a leisurely shore tour at the ROTC unit at Creighton, then was ordered to report to the USS Alabama, where his optimism disappeared on the first day of his first patrol.
It was after the two-day transit to Point Juliet, two days in which he’d spent all but a few moments in the control room staring at charts. The ship had completed its preparations to submerge, and they’d just taken a sounding, confirming that the water beneath them was as deep as expected. After two nauseating days rolling on the surface, everyone was eager to submerge, so the XO was encouraging the OOD, Lieutenant Kaiser, to hurriedly shift the watch to the control room and get down from the bridge.
The last lookout dropped down from the ladder, directly in front of the conn, and Kaiser came soon after. The Nav noticed that there was only one “Open” indication left on the Chief of the Watch’s panel, a single green “O” in a row of amber lines; the indicator for the lower hatch to the bridge. As Kaiser spun the ring that sealed the hatch, the nav watched the light turn from a green “O” into an amber-colored straight line, a line that continued the length of the COW’s panel. It was an elegant representation of their status: the ship was completely sealed.