Hail responded. “We’re more than a startup. We’ve completed the beta tests of our new traveling wave reactors, and now we have many of them up and running in countries without any other options for power.”
Nolan said, “You know, I thought I’d heard something about your reactor being outfitted on some older aircraft carriers.”
“Yes, we have been contacted by the U.S. Armed Forces to talk about putting a reactor on one of their old Nimitz aircraft carriers.”
“Has it been tested on other ships?” Nolan asked.
“It’s running everything on this ship right now,” Hail told him. “And we have twice the potential energy output as even the latest ship or subs in the American fleet.”
“Wow,” Nolan responded. “I had no idea. So, in laymen terms, how does your reactor work? What’s so special about it?”
“Oh, no! Don’t ask him that,” Kara complained.
Hail had just stuffed another forkful of food in his mouth, so Renner fielded the question.
“The traveling wave reactor starts with an initial reaction of a small amount of refined uranium. Then, inside the fuel bundle, it begins to burn its way through depleted uranium, which is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment stage. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, the United States alone created enough depleted uranium to power the world for more than a thousand years. And the spent fuel from the Hail reactor is very low-level stuff. It can be disposed of without any residual problems.”
“What makes the reactor so special? Is it safe?”
Kara jumped in, “Don’t ask him that. It’s like starting someone in on talking about their beloved pet. He will never shut up once he gets started talking about his reactors.”
Hail was done chewing.
Ignoring Kara, he responded, “It is physically impossible for our reactor to melt down.”
“Here we go,” Kara said, exasperated, putting her hands over her ears.
Hail continued. “It runs at atmospheric pressure, so there is no chance of the reactor blowing its top off. It also uses liquid sodium as a coolant, so there is no need for massive amounts of water to cool the reactor. It could be in the middle of a desert.”
“Isn’t salt corrosive?” asked Nolan. “I know it screws up just about everything on a ship.”
“Good question, and yes, it is,” Renner said. “But all the pipes around the reactor are lined with a special blend of ceramic we invented which is impervious to salt.”
“Please continue,” Nolan said, getting a kick out of watching Kara squirm.
“No!” Kara pleaded.
“And the wave reactor burns very slowly,” Hail said, smirking at Kara, who made a face as if she were going to be sick.
“Just like a wave washing over the sand, the nuclear reaction slowly burns through the depleted uranium. There are no control rods to drop in or out of water tanks. Once lit, our fuel cells can burn for ten years and power an entire city. It’s pennies for power. It will change the world.”
“Wow,” Nolan replied. “That is cool.”
“That’s boring,” Kara corrected. “I beg of you, please no more talk about nuclear reactors. I’ve only been on this ship for a month, and I’ve heard as much
as I ever want to know about power and uranium and plutonium. And let’s not forget the favorite topic of discussion — depleted uranium.”
“I know in the military they use depleted uranium on tanks as armor plating and on the end of armor-piercing projectiles,” Nolan said.
Renner added, “It’s also used in radiation therapy and in industrial radiography equipment.”
“Stop, stop — I can’t take it,” Kara protested.
Kara snatched a fork off the table and brought it up under her throat. “I’ll do it, I promise. If just one of you says another single nuclear word the rest of the dinner, I’ll drive this fork all the way into my jugular vein. I’ll end it all.”
The three men looked blankly at Kara. All four tines of the silver fork were making tiny pink indentions in her beautiful white neck.
Hail smiled at her and said, “Atom.”
Q Street Apartment Complex — Washington, D.C
Two large boxes were sitting in Trevor Rodgers’ living room. It had been a pain picking them up at his local UPS store and transporting them over to his apartment. Being the director of the FBI came with a slew of security entanglements.
After Rodgers had stood in line to sign for the UPS boxes, his security detail insisted on searching the boxes before they would allow them in the car. It had taken him a good three minutes of quarreling to convince them that the boxes had been sent from a close friend who would not send him a bomb or a big dose of anthrax.
Begrudgingly, his detail finally allowed him to place the boxes in his car. The insistence on searching the boxes was repeated after they had arrived at the director’s apartment. Past FBI directors had lived in a private residence, but Rodgers hated the drive and wanted to live closer to work That was a special concern because the entire apartment building is owned by the FBI, thus other FBI employees had apartments within the same building. If something in Rodgers’ special boxes went BOOM, he would be responsible for terminating not just his own life, but ending the lives of other FBI employees. Again, he went on the defensive, assuring them Marshall Hail would not send him a bomb. Unlike his normal cooperativeness with his detail, he requested they “chill out”. Then he requested they carry the boxes to his top-floor apartment. His security detail was not happy with the director’s shirking the safety precautions and lack of respect.
Now, as Rodgers sat on his couch staring at the boxes, he was a little unnerved at the thought of opening them. After all, his friend had recently demonstrated the capability of killing one of the top North Korean leaders using a drone smaller than what could fit in these two boxes. Hell, these boxes could hold hundreds of drones that size. But Trevor and Marshall had been lifelong friends, living next door to one another most of their young lives.
As the two boys were growing up, their fathers had been stationed in the same countries: Guam, Berlin, Japan, in so many places with languages neither boy had understood. But Marshall Hail and Trevor Rodgers had always been thankful that they had each other during that time. Their friendship was a lifeline that led them through a world of boys and girls that looked, acted, and spoke differently than they did. It made them feel as if they were abnormal. Each time their fathers received orders to be stationed in yet another country, Trevor’s first question had always been, “Is Marshall moving there, too?” Thankfully, each time the answer had been yes. It hadn’t occurred to Trevor that maybe their fathers had somehow coordinated their moves understanding that separating their sons and having them fend for themselves in a strange country could almost be construed as punitive. Marshall was the only constant Trevor remembered from his childhood.
Earlier that day, Marshall had e-mailed Trevor to ask him if he could pick up two boxes at the UPS store near him. But he had never expected the packages to be so large. One of the boxes was tall enough to hold an umbrella stand. The other was relatively flat and square — like a pizza-sized box about four pizzas thick. The e-mail Marshall had written instructed him to open the flat square box first, and then to sit back and wait. Wait for what? Hail hadn’t told him that part which was typical for his friend, Marshall. Creating drama was Marshall’s specialty.
Rodgers used a kitchen knife to cut the thick stranded packaging tape that sealed the middle flaps of the box. He then opened the loose flaps and bent them back so they were out of the way. He could already guess with a high degree of certainty what was in the box, so he sat back on the couch and waited for the box on his coffee table to do something.