“What was that?” asked Mark. As the only Control Room Supervisor left at Palo Verde Nuclear site, he felt he had to know everything.

The low rumbling he could hear through the thick walls continued unabated.

“Whatever it is, it is not seismic related. We’ve got no alarms,” replied Tom, Mark’s last overworked and underpaid Reactor Operator.

“Give me a break, Tom. Those alarms haven’t worked since that last I&C guy got shot by those environmental wackos last year.”

“Oh, sorry man. Kinda hard to remember what does and doesn’t work around here,” explained Tom. “Man, don’t those wack-jobs use electricity for anything anymore? Who’d want to live in the Arizona desert without air conditioning? Can’t they just leave us alone? We’re down to just a small handful of craftsman left who are brave enough to keep coming to work.”

“Or simply alive and able to come,” thought Mark.

Just then the radio cracked to life. “Control Room, pick up Security 1,” shouted a female voice.

“This is Unit 1,” replied Mark picking up the radio. “What’s going on, Security?”

“Mark, this is Cat. Looks like warehouse #1 just got destroyed.”

“Damn,” said Mark. “I thought that you had a team out there?”

“We did. Current drone footage shows all team members down. Hostile trucks are scattering out of there like the cockroaches they are, taking equipment and stores with them. Warehouse #1 is burning like Hell’s own kitchen.”

“This is going to hurt us Cat. Hurt us bad. All those spare parts we’ve been scavenging from the remains of Unit 2 and 3 were kept there. Some of our guys died due to radiation sickness just getting some of that stuff.”

“Yeah I know,” replied Cat. “This attack has hurt security too. My ace team is dead. Our last remote armory was hidden in that warehouse. I’m afraid that is also gone.”

“What?” shouted Tom, butting into the radio comms. “Storing your ammo outside the double fences! What fool thought that was a good idea?”

Cat’s icy reply cut through the radio silence. “Mine, Tom. Think you could do better?”

Mark smirked. Captain Amy “Cat” Smith was tough, damn tough and Tom knew it. She had saved his sorry hide more times than he could count on his ham-hands.

“Sorry Cat, but I…” began Tom before getting cut off by Cat’s curt follow-up. “You just keep that turbine spinning and making power. Leave the security to me!”

“Keep us posted Cat. Control out,” interrupted Mark, ending the tense exchange.

Mark was worried. Tom was acting all sickly or something. That weight lifting ex-football player bulk was noticeably shrunken. Too many months of long days and bad food. Now Cat’s security force just got its butt kicked. How was Cat going to take this? Ever since her family got killed in that botched hostage rescue attempt a few years back, Amy just didn’t seem right. Could she handle this new stress? Hell, she was already living 24/7 in the basement of the security building with half a dozen or so stray cats. All she had left was a few roaming patrols and some surveillance drones deployed on that last 50 mile stretch of power line heading into the city. It was only a matter of time before Earth First! or some other fringe wacko group figured that out and came back for the kill.

Just like they did to Unit 2 when that diesel fuel oil tanker truck full of high explosives wiped out their safety rated switchgear. The core melted, and inside Unit 2’s containment building it was still a radioactive death trap. All of that coming on the heels of that successful terrorist attack on Unit 3 when those jets out of LA and San Diego made direct hits on its Spent Fuel Storage Building and containment. The resulting damage destroyed the fuel storage building and cracked the containment shell. Luckily, Unit 3 was already shut down and defueled. All of its radioactive fuel had been shipped off site for long term storage. So while it must have made all the wackos happy, there was only low to mid-level contamination spread all over the place from the massive fire the jet fuel caused. So much for off-site security. Too much inter-departmental incompetence at the crumbling state and federal levels. Too much fighting for money, manpower and weapons. Not enough concern for actual hard assets.

Tom’s coughing fit brought Mark back to the present situation. “Hey Tom, you OK?”

“No dude. I don’t feel so good,” Tom was barely audible, even from six feet away.

“What kinda rad-dose did you pick up last month when you did that emergency equipment salvage job?” asked Mark.

“Who knows?” Tom said. “We haven’t had working dosimetry here for ages, remember? Ever since that van load of Health Physic Rad-techs got wiped out in that “crash” six months ago.”

“Six months?” Mark said. “You’ve been getting unknown radiation doses once a month for six months? You nuts or something?”

“Yup” was all Tom could get out in between coughing fits. “Guess I am.”

“Tom, you’ve got to get out of here if you want to live to see another month!”

“Yeah, right. Out to where? It is too hot in Arizona, and there’s not enough water to go around. We’re in the desert remember?”

“Remember your buddy Mike? Didn’t he leave here a few years back? Took all his boats and campers up to the Rim-country to some mountain lake? You could go there.”

“My old buddy Mike,” Tom mused. “Yeah, I could go there. Or at least try to find what little lake he went to.”

“Got water and pine trees. Big guy like you should be able to find some work and food. Sure beats this place.”

“No kidding,” Tom smiled. “Now quit bugging me. Don’t you have a control circuit to rewire or something?”

Two weeks later, Mark stood watch in the control room by himself. Tom was gone. Just didn’t show up one day. Did radiation poisoning get to him, or did he just take off and try to reach Mike’s place. Probably would never know. All those vandals-turned-anarchists taking out the cell towers and stations was really screwing up communications.

Suddenly, a panic stricken voice came over the radio. “Mark, this is Cat. Pick up NOW!”

“Take it easy,” replied Mark. “I’m right here.”

“Take it easy?!?” shouted Cat. “Not with the pictures the drones are sending into HQ right now. I’ve got a column of home-made battle rigs full of guys with guns about 5 miles out coming straight for us!”

“Damn! Nobody we can call for help?”

“Nope. Not a chance,” Cat said sadly. “Too busy guarding the border or interfering in other countries’ business. Even if they actually answered the call, they couldn’t get here in time to do us any good.”

“How much time do we have?”

Cat sighed. “Hard to tell. Maybe 10 to 15 minutes.”

“You still got that security 4×4 truck up and ready to roll?” Mark was already making a plan.

“Always,” came the reply.

“OK. Tell you what. Grab whatever food, water, guns and ammo you can and come and pick me up outside Unit 1’s main entrance in 5 minutes.”

“Sure thing,” replied Cat. “But why 5 minutes? I can do all that and be there in 2.”

“No, I need 5. I’ve got to trip the reactor and start the emergency cooling systems. Got to start cooling the core before those bad guys get here and start screwing things up. Besides, gives you time to get supplies.”

“10-4. See you in 5. Cat out.” Radio silence.

With the reactor tripped and all the emergency pumps and diesel generators running, Mark exited the Unit 1 control room for the last time. Forty years of his life back and forth through these doors gone. Exiting the blast doors was a little rough with eyes full of tears and arms full of what emergency rations he could find and carry.

“What took you so long?” yelled Cat as Mark stumbled out the main entrance towards her truck.

“Food!” Mark smiled as he held up his arms full of e-rations. Throwing the box in the truck bed next to the gas cans, he jumped into the cab.

“Where are we heading?” asked Cat as they sped away from the approaching chaos.

“North. To Utah. I’ve got family there. Know a young guy about your age I can introduce you to,” Mark smirked. “Besides, all those crazy Mormons have been talking about the end of the world for years, so they have all kinds of food storage and stuff. We can live there.”

“What if we run out of food on the trip?” asked Cat as they bounced along across the desert floor, avoiding the roads.

“Guess we’ll just have to find some fresh meat to roast over a fire. You got your gun, right?”

“Yeah right. What are we going to shoot? Some bug infested rabbit or something?” sneered Cat.

“Nope,” Mark smiled and jerked his thumb backwards to the wiggling burlap bag she had placed in the back of the extended cab truck. “Cats.”

Glossary of Terms:

Control Room Supervisor – The person in charge of the operators that have the responsibility for operating the reactor. The main reactor control room was where the operators would monitor reactor parameters and start/stop equipment as needed to not only support keeping the reactor within limits, but also to produce electricity.

I&C – Instrumentation and Controls. Basically the hardware/software used in the control systems used to maintain the reactor and the equipment necessary to produce electricity. An I&C technician would be the person testing and maintaining that hardware/software.

Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, Unit 1, Unit 2, and Unit 3 – Palo Verde was a three unit nuclear site located approximately 58 miles west of Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Each unit was separate and independent of each other and had their own control rooms, containment buildings, and auxiliary support buildings.

Containment Building – The steel lined three to four feet thick re-enforced concrete structure that housed the reactor vessel and all the primary system support piping and components. The reactor core, or fuel, was within the reactor vessel. The reactor control rods, made up of material designed to stop the neutron chain reaction, were also inside this building. Once irradiated and used to heat the water used in the heat transfer process, this fuel must be kept cool at all times, or else risk meltdown.

Spent Fuel Storage Building – The reactors had to be refueled every 18 to 24 months. During the refueling periods, about 1/3 of the fuel rods assemblies were removed from the core and transferred into a separate adjoining building where they were placed in specially designed storage racks to ensure they remain sub-critical (not able to sustain a nuclear chain reaction). All of this transfer and storage was under 23 to 25 feet of water. This storage pool had its own cooling system and backup. While the storage pool itself was a thick concrete and stainless-steel lined massive bunker, the building around it was usually just a simple steel framed metal covered structure.

Dosimetry – All nuclear plant workers had to wear on their person at all times some sort of device used to detect and measure the radiation exposure that they received.

Trip (or tripping) the reactor – The process whereby the control rods, made up of material that stop nuclear chain reaction, are inserted to shut down the reactor. Once shutdown or tripped, you still have to provide cooling to the fuel for an extended period of time to prevent meltdown.

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A very peculiar account. I found it in a book we received as part of our information exchange with the nation of Deseret, “Tales of the End: Surviving the Apocalypse.” The stories seem to be at least partially based on real life accounts, but have obviously been edited into a third person narrative, and given a glossary of terms to help uneducated readers. The account does corroborate some information I’ve been able to discover about this power plant. Anti-nuclear terrorist groups were certainly quite common at the time, after the events in Iraq years prior. While many other power plants around the world went on to full nuclear meltdown as their governments withered, Palo Verde inexplicably did not. In fact, according to all reports, that area is now one of Deseret’s most prosperous farming zones, specifically for its relatively lower radiation levels. So either the locals invented the story to explain the phenomenon, or perhaps there really was a brave crew of operators fighting to protect the land from ANOTHER nuclear disaster.