Nuclear Beach

I. THE NEW PLANT

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN of the media, welcome to Big Island Lighting Company's new power plant—Alpha 1.  A1,  as we call it, is the first nuclear-fired plant in our system.  We will start our tour in the reactor observation room just down the hall.  Please step this way.  The lean man in his well-tailored navy suit was apparently new at this job, but, with Ivy League aplomb, he continued:

The plant has a capacity of 1,000 megawatts—enough to supply electricity for a city of half a million.  That means Alpha alone can take care of the needs of Shore City—on the mainland 17 miles to the west—and still have enough extra capacity to provide for the surrounding farm areas as well as for a modest growth in the region.

The group stopped in the middle of a balcony high up in a cavernous hall which stretched the full 16-story height of the concrete containment building.  The steel roof arched upward toward the center with clerestory windows ringing the roofline.  Sunlight streamed in through these tiny portholes creating dancing patterns of light which focused and merged at the center of the room far below them, much like a cathedral.  Instead of picking up an altar, however, the sunlight bounded off the glistening Zircaloy of a giant vertical octopus, its irregular tentacles reaching towards the ceiling.

How does it work? asked a young reporter from the Shore City Sentinel. 

We are now standing on the rim of the reactor's core, explained Bob Sheraton, the BILCO official. The principle is rather simple.  Those hundreds of metal rods which you see grouped below us contain uranium pellets.  As the uranium atoms split in a fission process, the energy released heats the water in surrounding chambers, turning it to steam which is then channeled through that giant pipe, he said, pointing to the left.  The steam turns the turbine which generates electricity—just as in coal or oil-fired plants.

"Is it working yet? asked the WSHR-TV correspondent.

No.  This is the press preview.  If it were in operation you would not be allowed here.  Next week BILCO's President James B. Speare Jr. will start the plant at the official ceremony.

If you can get the same results with fossil fuel plants, why run the environmental risks of a nuclear set-up? asked Cass Golden, Editor of the Big Island weekly newspaper, The Clarion.

That's a loaded question or rather two questions, Sheraton replied, unruffled.  "The aim of Alphas is to provide the lowest cost electricity to BILCO customers and, we believe, that with the price of oil constantly on an upward spiral, this is the route to go.  As for the 'environmental risks,' oil and coal pollute the air while nuclear is a clean fuel.

In fact, he continued, a utility in New England found it has spawned a whole new industry through environmental adjustments.  The warm water discharges from its nuclear plant are attracting shellfish and lobster farming operations.  The plant has been an economic boon to a declining region.

How about that terrific health club set-up in the basement: gym, pool, showers, sauna, asked another reporter. I heard you spend half a million to outfit the place.  What will the stockholders say to that little fringe benefit?

It's really not so much a fringe as a necessity, said the newly-anointed tour guide.  Much of the work at Alpha is simply sitting and watching: dials, gauges, computers, recorders.  Believe it or not, that kind of activity can be very tedious.  We have the on-site gym to give employees a chance to work off some of that fatigue during breaks.  Actually, it makes for a more alert worker.  As for the cost, when divided among all the stockholders, it really is a tiny amount.

It all sounds so innocuous, Mr. Sheraton, like Boy Scout camp, said Cass.  Why then does the company need a vice president to conduct a plant tour?

I am surprised at you, Cass, he replied.  You know BILCO highly values the media.  Suppose you come up with some technical or policy questions that only an officer can answer?

Okay, then, she replied.  If something goes wrong, can Alpha blow up?

No.  That is a popular misconception about nuclear plants.  They use a different type  of fuel from bombs.  Only a minute amount of Uranium 238, which is the mainstay of a bomb, is used in a nuclear plant.  In fact, there's a greater statistical chance of your being injured in a car or plan accident than in a nuclear plant incident.

What about radiation leaks?  How can we be sure we won't all be irradiated and eventually develop tumors and cancers?

This containment building has an incredible number of built-in engineering safeguards: concrete and steel-plated walls, safety valves, sprays to wash out radiation in case of an accidental spill, filters, a negative internal atmosphere to keep outside air pressing in instead of the reverse, and on and on, Sheraton said.  "We have all the protection that modern science can provide.

Besides you know BILCO's president himself lives on the Island.  Would he choose to have his family here if he felt there was even the slightest risk?  He paused for a moment and then asked, Are there any other questions?

The group was silent.

In that case, let's all go down to the plant cafeteria for some refreshments.  On the way out, you can pick up the press package which will give you some background information on the number of employees working at Alpha, a map of the compound, a schematic of the reactor building, an explanation of the failsafe guards and other details I am sure you will want for your news stories.  Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

As Cass drove away from the newly-blacktopped parking lot, she glanced back at the plant.  The complex was dominated by the giant white dome-shaped containment building with the nuclear reactor core at its heart.  She though about what Sheraton had said—the safeguards.  Three feet thick walls, steel liners, sprays and filters for radioactivity, valves which are computerized to shut off the flow.  Would they be enough in case of an emergency?  How safe was this newcomer to Big Island?

With the sunshine gleaming on its fresh painted surface, its white shingled exterior copied from the town's houses and what looked like a widow's walk railing on the roof, it seems innocent enough, she thought, almost like a temple to a modern new god of energy.  A little out of place on Big Island, though, she conceded.

Cass looked through the windshield at the gentle, green rolling hills which lapped the sides of the two-lane highway cutting like an equator through Big Island's middle.  It was p0ossible to ride across the Island in under half an hour. Aside from the roads, many no larger than a lane, the Island today appeared much as it did hundreds of years ago when the Indians on the mainland first traveled across the Sound and named it Big Island.

With its modest farms and small cluster of houses and stores forming its single town, it hardly seemed the place for a nuclear plant the size and scope of Alpha 1.  Yet this is where BILCO wanted the plant to go.  After years of battle with the local environmentalists, the company had prevailed.  Alpha, perched on a rise facing the Sound and overlooking the municipal beach, was now a permanent feature of Big Island.

Venting a soft sigh, Cass pulled into the parking spot next to the Clarion office.  I better write the story while it is fresh in my mind, she told herself.  Nodding hello to Bessie, the receptionist, Cass went straight to her desk and began typing:

BIG ISLAND JOINS THE NUCLEAR CLUB

By Cass Golden, Editor

Today Big Island entered the nuclear age.  The Big Island Lighting Company introduced to the media its Alpha 1 plant, a giant complex on prime BI waterfront capable of providing not only energy for Big Island and Shore City to the west, but with enough left over to sell to needy communities not fortunate enough to have a farsighted utility such as BILCO in their midst...

II. CASS GOLDEN

CASS THOUGHT BACK TO the time eight years ago when she and her young daughter had first seen the Island.  It was a few months after Larry had died and both of them were still aching from the loss.  Cass had decided that she and Beth need a summer away from everything familiar.  Someone had mentioned Big Island:

There is not much to do there.  It has miles of white sandy beaches and a few ancient Victorian houses presided over by old ladies who wear started cotton housedresses even when the temperature reaches 98 degrees.  They usually rent out rooms to summer visitors.  What passes as entertainment is a stroll down Elm Avenue after dinner to look at the shop windows.  That is the place to go for a rest.

Cass had liked the way Big Island sounded and, for the first time in months, felt galvanized enough to make arrangements.  Soon she and seven-year-old Beth were on the ferry leaving Shore City.

From a distance, through the slight fog which hovered over the water, all they could see was the green outline of the Island.  As the ferry neared, shapes began to form in the mist.  On the cliffs facing the harbor, they could discern weather-beaten shingled houses with their windows eyeing the sea.  The browns and grays of the isolated oceanside homes gave way to the pinks and greens and whites of the more elegant Victorian houses which fringed the streets of the single town girding the harbor.

Mommy, it is so beautiful, Beth had said.  I wish daddy had seen it when he was alive.

Cass had gripped the rail a little more tightly.  We will have to enjoy it for him, she had replied.

The next day, with the sun brightening their way, they had walked down Elm Avenue enraptured by the tiny shops so different from those in the depressingly similar malls on the mainland.  Although few in number, each store was indelibly marked by the owner's personality—here a sunny display window, there a dusty, gloomy shop, one street level, another three steps down, some with neatly arranged merchandise layered on bare wooden shelves, still another with a jumble of items tumbling from the shop window and massed in heaps and barrels without any discernible organization.

There seemed to be no such thing as a specialty shop, a grocery or perhaps a children's wear store.  Each held a potpourri of diverse merchandise from jellybeans to rubberized rafts for floating on the gentle surf.  The buyer-owner, moved by personal whim or fancy, filled his store with those articles he himself liked.  No wonder so many of the items, yellowed with age and covered with the dust of past summers, seemed to have settled in corners with an air of permanence.

Beth begged for something from all: slippers from Hong Kong in one, a sun visor in another, a bag of old-fashioned red-hot candies in a third.  Afraid that the better part of the afternoon was being wasted, Cass had urged Beth to come along to the beach.  Reluctantly, the little girl had torn herself away from the maze of merchandise only upon the promise to return again some rainy day in the not-too-distance future.

The sight of the beach had swept away Beth's lingering reluctance at the too-short shopping trip.  White-powdered sand, flecked with slivers of silver rock, reflected the sunlight and cast a warm, welcome haze.  The beach spread as far as the eye could reach.  Occasionally, a patch of dune grass, sticking up like whiskers, interrupted the undulations of the sand.  Carefully spaced, as if by a master photographer for a picture, groups of bathers, some shaded by bright red-and-white striped umbrellas, dotted the sand.

The water mirrored the blue of the sky, but in still deeper tones.  It lapped lazily at the sand, leaving behind a new outline of dark brown with each successive wave.  Without a barrier to break on, the waves, spread straight across the horizon, presenting no menace to the scattered bathers who dunked and bobbed in the surf, although some screamed in fake terror at each new ripple.

When Beth ran to the ocean, Cass had stayed behind on the blanket.  Listening to no one's voice but her daughter's delighted squeaks in the distance, Cass had closed her eyes and stretcher her long, lean limbs.  Her thoughts drifted and then timidly probed the still-tender areas of memory about Larry.

Larry, with his strong, athletic build, even temper, a smile that revealed an envious row of even white teeth.  Cut down by a heart attack in the blossom of his youth...a husband a young father...taken from us at the age of  39... the clergyman had droned at the funeral.

It had been so unreal, as if she were an actress playing a role.  Listening to the eulogy, she had clung to the though she would walk outside and  there would be Larry to tell her how well she had performed, how proud of her he was...

But it was real.  In the weeks that followed, the blow was almost physical.  She could pinpoint the dull pain, the bruised feeling in her chest that faded, but never completely.

Cass had told herself  that at 32, she had to live the rest of her life.  She had to keep going.  There was Beth, the house, so many things to put in order.  Then she would see his favorite cheese in the store and the tears would absurdly start as she stood in the middle of the supermarket aisle.

The house—a composite of their life together—was unbearable.  There was the hinge on the garage door he had said he would fix, the beloved threadbare bathrobe he was going to throw out some day, the stack of magazines for future reference.

It was the small things which triggered the memories and tears.  Sometimes, when Beth was in school and the thousands of familiar objects crowded in on her, Cass had fled from the house as if pursued by demons.  She had gone to the library and started with unseeing eyes at the book before her or sat on a park bench and watched with morbid intensity some toddlers play in the sandbox.  She had made mental notes of the way they lifted their arms, how their cheeks dimpled when they smiled, how many upper or lower teeth she could count, the color of their eyes, hair and clothes until her head and eyes ached from the observation...

The sun was hot.  It made her closed eyelids glow red.  Cass turned over on the blanket.  She must have drifted into sleep because the next thing she remembered was Beth, wet and laughing, bouncing on her back to wake her.

Do you like Big Island? Cass had asked.  "Mommy, I love it.  Let's stay here forever.

That first summer had passed blissfully for Cass and Beth.  Big Island was just as promised, a place to rest, a place without memories of Larry.  By fall, Cass had come to a decision.  She and Beth would move to Big Island.

It was one thing to be a summer visitor, another to live there, as Cass subsequently found out.  She and Beth had moved in November after the summer population of 10,000 had contracted to a hardy 1,500 residents.

The trip across the Sound was through choppy gray waves which tossed the ferry from side to side and made it climb up and down mountain slopes of water.  The doubly disruptive motion made them both feel sick.  What had seemed like a pleasant exercise in the summer had turned into an interminable sea voyage in late fall.

The pier was bleak and gray, but it seemed as if the entire population had come down to meet the ferry.  The townspeople, in their navy pea jackets, wool hats and warm overcoats waved as the ferry docked.  Each had his private reason for standing there in the chill November wind.  Perhaps one was waiting for a delivery from the mainland or greeting a returning member of his family.  A group boarded for the trip back to America.  And, of course, there were those who, having nothing more exciting to do, had come to watch, to see who and what disembarked.

It was a brutal day to be outdoors in the wind tunnel known as Big Island.  The cold wind whipped and tossed about whatever was not tied down—a scrap of old newspaper, some leaves, the bowler an imprudent visitor had chosen to wear.  Gone were the friendly sea breezes of summer.  November winds were the dress rehearsal for Big Island's famous winter storms.

But the natives were ready.  The small boats of the fishermen, retired for the afternoon after a morning