Van Dyckman wore his best pinstriped suit, and he had shaved an hour before the meeting so there wouldn’t be even a hint of a shadow on his face. The President’s calendar allotted only half an hour for the meeting, but if everything went well, maybe he’d be in the Oval Office for a lot longer than that. The President was famous for throwing the schedule out the window and spending whatever time he felt a subject required.
He mentally ran over his talking points. The answer he proposed seemed so obvious, the decision clear, even though the nation had avoided action for decades. This President, at least, had a “damn the torpedoes!” mindset, and he could make a real decision to solve a difficult problem.
Van Dyckman was so eager he barely noticed the surroundings of the outer anteroom, and when he finally entered the Oval Office, he was ready. He had been waiting for the right opportunity, and this was it.
Smiling, he shook the President’s hand, trying to convince himself this was just like any other high-level meeting. The man was smaller in stature than he had expected after seeing numerous raised-voice speeches and rallies on TV, but van Dyckman could sense his larger-than-life presence. It reminded him a little of a buried land mine. “Thank you for seeing me, Mr. President. I’ll try to be direct, so as not to waste your time.”
“Sounds like this nation’s been wasting a lot of time,” the President said. Blunt, aggressive — and that was good, as far as van Dyckman was concerned. “Wait a minute before we get started.” The President stepped back to his desk and picked up the phone. “Stephanie, is Colonel Whalen on his way?”
“Just arrived, sir,” said the intercom.
The door opened again and a military officer stood there in Air Force blues, a full colonel but obviously young for his rank. He was sandy haired and handsome with blue-green eyes, and van Dyckman couldn’t help but make an unkind comparison to a Ken doll.
The President said, “Dr. van Dyckman, meet my military aide, Colonel Shawn Whalen. He’s an expert on nuclear matters, and I trust his advice.”
The officer shook the President’s hand, then turned to van Dyckman. “We’ve met before at several DOE functions.”
“Of course.” Van Dyckman squeezed Whalen’s hand as if competing with his grip. He had no memory of meeting the man previously — Whalen was only a colonel, after all, and he met so many more important people in his duties.
A White House steward brought in a coffee service tray. Van Dyckman had imagined holding a cut-crystal rocks glass and sipping fine Scotch with the President as they discussed matters of national importance. But it was only mid-morning, which was a little early to drink even by Washington standards.
It didn’t matter. He expected to be coming to the Oval Office many more times. This proposal was the only real near-term solution for the nuclear storage crisis.
The three men sat on the sofas, leaning forward as van Dyckman removed his portfolio from his briefcase. He unbuttoned his suit jacket, brushed away imaginary lint. “Let me start off by saying, sir, that the attack on Granite Bay could have been worse — much worse. Fortunately, through fast thinking and decisive action, we managed to avert a widespread dispersal of radiation from the spent rods. Good thing I was managing the situation from Washington so I could employ the correct emergency procedures without red tape or delays.”
Colonel Whalen raised an eyebrow. “We’ve studied the transcripts of the phone conversations, and I believe Adonia Rojas was the person instrumental in saving the facility — as well as having the foresight to fortify her own buildings ahead of time, without help from DOE. If she hadn’t done so, the plane crash would have caused a far greater disaster.”
Van Dyckman opened the binder as a distraction to cover his frown. He didn’t need to hit a conversational speed bump just when he was about to present his main points. “Ms. Rojas and I work very closely, Colonel, and I admit, funds are scarce. But we dodged only one bullet at Granite Bay. Over the years, other incidents occurred that were nearly as bad, but they were quietly covered up. Right now, our entire nuclear industry is under heavy fire, and Granite Bay only exacerbated the problem. More nuclear disasters are just waiting to happen, and we can only put on so many layers of Band-Aids to solve a problem that needs a tourniquet.”
The President frowned, already growing impatient. He looked down at the presentation folder, waiting to see the report. “Enough with the metaphors, Dr. van Dyckman. Tell me how to fix this. I want a real solution, something we can implement right away.”
Van Dyckman tried not to show his relief. “And I have a solution, sir, but first let me give a quick overview. We currently have ninety-nine commercial nuclear reactors spread over thirty states. They’re all vital to our economy and our power grid, but short-sighted protesters would have us shut down all the nuclear plants — which would be a disaster, since the U.S. derives about twenty percent of our total energy output from nuclear power.”
Colonel Whalen thumbed through the charts. “Yes, the people at Sanergy are having a field day after Granite Bay.” He looked up. “In a way I don’t blame them for their concern, but do they really believe our nuclear power plants are that fragile?”
Annoyed, van Dyckman twisted his mouth, but he kept his voice steady. “You would rather we tell everyone the truth? That the majority of our temporary storage facilities aren’t hardened against wackos flying kamikaze planes? We’re lucky this was a lone-wolf event. A Sanergy extremist, not a larger-scale assault.”
“It’s not clear that Sanergy was really involved, or if it was just a single fanatic,” Whalen said. “In any case, Sanergy wants to use the incident as a lever to force their own goals, to move away from nuclear power and embrace green energy, but that’s simply not realistic in the near term. No matter how optimistic Sanergy might be, we can’t just shut down a fifth of our nation’s electrical capacity overnight because of wishful thinking.”
“Right,” van Dyckman said, glad that the young colonel wasn’t arguing with him. Maybe they were on the same page after all.
Whalen continued, “And the plane that hit Granite Bay shows that our current stopgap practice of storing so much high-level radioactive waste in local holding areas is not only a safety issue, but a security concern as well. A big one. Now, no one could make nuclear weapons out of even high-level waste, but a terrorist could easily create a dirty bomb with the material. And that, fueled by public hysteria, would dwarf any threat we’ve seen.”
Van Dyckman felt a warm glow. The colonel was making his case for him! He turned the page in his binder to show another chart and continued, “The problem is that our nuclear power plants generate two thousand tons of high-level radioactive waste each year in the form of spent fuel rods and other hazardous materials. We need a safe and secure place to store it, preferably out of public view, and right now we’ve got nothing.” He paused to let the words sink in.
The President’s brow furrowed as he concentrated. “So it’s just sitting around? How much waste are we talking about, total?”
“Over one hundred thousand metric tons across the nation. Currently, as we just saw at Granite Bay, most of those spent fuel rods are in temporary storage areas at each site, either in cooling ponds or dry-storage casks. They’re safe, but Sanergy argues they have the potential to leak into groundwater, streams, or even the air.”
Van Dyckman leaned forward. “We’ve had commercial power plants since 1958, when President Eisenhower launched the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania. And they’ve been generating nuclear waste ever since. One hundred thousand tons of it.”