LAW’s All Things Nuclear #597, Thursday, (04/11/2024)
LAW’s All Things Nuclear #597, Thursday, (04/11/2024)
“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity.”
PG&E’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on Avila Beach near San Luis Obispo, CA
LLAW’s COMMENTARY, Thursday, (04/11/2024)
Today’s Post is dedicated to the original 1st draft of Chapter 2 of my new, in-progress, novel dubbed “El Nuclear Diablo”, which is being serialized here in a bi-weekly Post . . .
El Nuclear Diablo
(A novel by Lloyd Albert Williams-Pendergraft)
(Review of Chapter 1 (Unedited Draft): Albert Lloyd Williams has been intercepted on Vancouver Island on his way to Juneau, where he had planned to take over the management and administration of the hastily organized North American operation in an attempt to save as many lives, human and otherwise, as possible while the nuclear power industry tried desperately to stop the radiation leakage at dozens of severely damaged nuclear power plants’ failure to operate without releasing constant radiation to the atmosphere. Rumors of reactor meltdowns were rampant, but because reliable communications were slim and none, knowing anything for certain was impossible.
The interception of Williams before he and his small group reached Juneau, Alaska, was the assignment given the two U.S. military Generals and their own small band of two pilots and a records compilation researcher/reporter assigned to take Williams to an unknown destination that would be disclosed while in transit on the military modified Boeing 737 to be used for completing their mission by the evening of the following day.)
Chapter 2 (Unedited Draft)
“We understand that you are the owner, president, and CEO of “Albert Williams’ Energy Labs” with laboratories and offices in Palo Alto, California, and at your ranch in central Wyoming south of Casper and you have business offices in Carmel, California, and also the existence of major world-wide communication facilities of many kinds and capabilities at the Wyoming ranch. I believe the ranch is called “The Pathfinder” and covers well over a half million acres. Is that correct?”, the Army General asked after introducing himself as Scott Roane who was the general in charge of the military use of nuclear energy at the Pentagon, followed with a short introduction of his counterpart, the Air Force General, Marcus Aurilio, who was also involved in nuclear power management at the Pentagon. The men shook hands sitting in their seats aboard the airplane.
“Yes, that’s all correct,” I said. “I was contacted by the FBI about 30 minutes after the beginning of the incident at the PG&E nuclear plant disaster and was told that nuclear power plants were leaking and spreading radiation all over the country, many already facing meltdown. Fortunately, I was already aware of the containment failures, so I avoided going into shock when that call arrived yesterday afternoon. So where are we going now? And why the change in direction?”
“We’re not at liberty to disclose all that, Mr. Williams, but we can tell you it’s already about probable nuclear war as well as nuclear power plants being used as weapons of mass destruction.”, Aurilio said.
I sat pretending to be calm, while staring wide-eyed at the General across the aisle, considering what I’d just been told, finding myself not surprised even though I hadn’t given such a development even a moment’s thought during the last two days. “Well, I suppose there has to be at least sabotage . . . or terrorism”, letting my voice trail off into brow-curling thought. But, I reminded myself again, it really didn’t matter how or why it happened, because it had and our job now was to find a way to overcome it all.
#
General Aurilio got up from his seat and walked toward the cockpit. In a few seconds he returned with the young lady dressed in fatigues who had said earlier she was the acting ‘stewardess’ on this flight. As she approached, I noted that she wore Captains’ bars on her shoulders, and that she had sparkling wide-awake curious eyes to go with her lovely face. “This is Captain Sabrisse Horvat. She will be your and our biographer and recorder for the foreseeable future, keeping detailed logs or records of communications that would not otherwise be memorialized.”
She held out her right hand and I grasped it gently, saying, “Well, you will fit right in with our several young women who work at the lab and the ranch. I am pleased to meet you, Sabrisse!”
“Well, Sir, I feel like I know you already, Sir,” Sabrisse said, a light cheerful lilt in her voice. “I’ve read every article I could find about you on the Internet, as well as what your companies are all about,” she went on. “I feel a little overwhelmed by who and what you are, what you’ve done, and though I’m probably guessing about what you will do in this situation, but I wouldn’t trade this opportunity for the world, Sir.”
“Okay, then,”, Williams said. “But you need to call me by my first name, Albert, and I hope I am allowed to call you Sabrisse rather than Ma’am or Captain. Are you of French decent?
No, my parents are Czechoslovakian. They still live in Prague. But I went to college here at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. I’ve lived here with my American relatives since I was about twelve years old, and so, of course, I am a citizen of America.”
“So now I have met all five of my hosts on this trip, but I still don’t know what it’s all about,” I said, turning to General Aurilio, with a question mark sort of inscribed look on my face.”
“You will know soon enough, Sir,” Aurilio responded, “We will land for the night at a small Airport near your laboratory at Stanford and ask you to bring your two most adept technicians along with you and then we will proceed on to your private airport at the Pathfinder Ranch. Once there we will tell your entire group how we feel we should proceed in this grave matter, but we will inform you in advance, of course, of our hopes and fears during the longer flight in the morning. You will soon understand exactly why we have kidnapped you, so to speak, and of the value we are most certain you can offer the world that no one else can – especially in such a time that seems like an impending doomsday.”
Earlier, even in the darkness, I had noticed the flight pattern was similar to our yacht trip north, retracing by air the over-sea route we’d taken along the Pacific coastline, because I had expected us to go directly east south east overland in a route toward Washington D.C. and a visit with President Biden and his White House staff. But along the way I had slowly figured this was not a ‘political’ trip, and recognized the urgency that showed from this highly intelligent and trained military personnel who exuded far more well-considered urgency than any political individual I’d ever met.
What little sleep we got, we got on the airplane at a small private airport that I had long previously used, finding a hangar to avoid the present small amounts of radiation that we had tracked as we traveled. I noted that it was only a minimal increase from the day before when I’d been near here, so there was little concern about radiation thus far, but we all knew there was only a minimal dosimeter samples of what was soon to come. But still, I was anxious to get to Pathfinder, a place where I was more comfortable than anywhere else on the planet, and unless there were soon to be warheads attacking our own nuclear missile silos and warheads, the death dosimeter rates of radiation would be several weeks away or even months in the future. Unbeknownst to most, including many of our own close-knit Pathfinder family we had communication capabilities with just about every little inhabited nook and cranny on Earth. I was pretty sure that this fact was a huge reason for what could well be a huge refuge as well as a headquarters area for a major effort to, for the first time in human history, try to save our planet and its gracious life-giving abundance, actually work on protecting our habitat rather than destroying it by slovenly misuse and greedily devouring its life-giving resources. The place was known as “Pathfinder” long before I came along, and I certainly had no inclination to alter the meaning of that truth . . .
After selecting the limited number of two assistants (had I had a choice, and if I was allowed, I would have taken them all, with their families and friends, with us to Pathfinder, but both of those I chose were imaginative and well-trusted experts in our extended nuclear effort to harness the nuclear energy that I was quite suddenly negatively affected with personal doubts about the nearly life-long dream to continue on with in our tiny, barely successful, recently with the first slightly positive transition of energy, and the obvious never-ending effort to develop the god-like ability of a conceited overacting brain of mankind to contain the nuclear reaction in such a way as to accomplish what we call fusion. We know it is possible, but we simply may not be mentally or intellectually capable of creating an under-control-like power that functions like our sun. I often believe the alchemy is simply beyond our ken. In more recent years I have been studying the concept of Tesla’s idea of creating and controlling electricity as nature’s product, spending less time, effort, and money on nuclear fission or the risks of nuclear fusion both. I do believe Tesla’s is the way to creating safely controlled and free electricity as necessary for all kinds of life. We do know how fission and fusion work, but in one case cannot control it at all with a reasonable effort and in the other case cannot control its waste product nor the containment of both. Whenever I see lightning randomly generated in the sky directed naturally at a controlling object such as the Statue of Liberty, a protective lightning rod for a building or someone’s home, or an old lonesome tree on a hill, I cannot help but know that Tesla was right, and had he been searching for a commercial product that could have been cheaply purchased by the multitudes he would have succeeded in creating his knowledge, therefore creating a world of free and absolutely controlled safe electricity. But without a financial reward for his supporters, he and his electrical concepts were worthless.
But now I am wondering if time has run out on us all, and that humanity has outdone its ability to sustain itself on all that Mother Nature has successfully offered to the human way, essentially free of charge such as air to breathe, food to eat, fire (a form of energy) to warm ourselves, animals to travel on, all of which we have in one way or another outgrown for reasons unknown as we reach for the stars without knowing exactly why, or what the reaching really is or if it’s achievable. I know in my heart it is not an intangible thing called money nor a more broad term called capitalism because somehow we can never seem to grow to new heights without ‘buying’ whatever it is we need — or think we need.
Now I have only a few years left personally to find the alchemical link, and because of our use of nuclear fuel that we fail to understand entirely how to use it, or how long our remaining time to find success may be, and I find myself wishing that I had followed in Tesla’s footsteps even if my death had come before success because we can never call nuclear power of either kind a success because they will both require money to buy and use. To me, that is not good enough, but I have spent nearly a lifetime trying to harness a kind of electrical energiy that cannot be controlled in either way.
It is with a feeling of regret that I now feel forced to try to save humanity from themselves because we, us, and them didn’t know any better. My depression shows as we drive to my own Williams Energy Lab Limited I have long called WELL, but knowing all is not. So, I say to myself as I sit in the right front passenger seat of the rental car while we drive to the Lab, “I have one last chance to help save a few of us.” I will use the next few months as my personal WELL-being. And if I find what Tesla would have had he had the same financial resources I have, I will name my success after him rather than use his hams for acquiring something called ‘money’.
We find my Lab at full force, working hard to solve a mathematical problem that will never be solved. Unbeknownst to my companions my life has changed by a polarity of 180 degrees in the time it has taken to fly from Vancouver Island to my nuclear laboratory with its billions of dollars of nuclear reactors for both fission and fusion, neither of which should have ever been considered for use by mankind. I feel foolish.
I quickly choose two young unattached female post-graduate PhDs, with mathematical backgrounds from my own alma-mater, tell the others to continue to come to work until they are no longer allowed to travel to and from their homes and after that they are on their own “until I return; if I return.” The tears are the eye-liners of the day. The hugs are what I believe will be the final goodbye.
We take the short ride (all eight of us) in a limo to the small airport, climb the staircase, find our places, and are soon taxiing down the runway on our way to my favorite possession of all, the “Pathfinder Ranch”.
End of Chapter 2
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Thurssday,(04/11/2024)
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
How can the U.S. counter China's expanding influence in Asia? Court its ... - Red River Radio
Red River Radio
By clicking “Accept All Cookies ... Michel Martin is the weekend host of All Things ... nuclear crisis and the Fukushima earthquake and nuclear disaster.
How can the U.S. counter China's expanding influence in Asia? Court its neighbors - KVNF
KVNF
All Streams. About · About KVNF ... Michel Martin is the weekend host of All Things ... nuclear crisis and the Fukushima earthquake and nuclear disaster.
ASD Space Policy Keynote Address for the 2024 Space Policy Symposium (As prepared)
Department of Defense
We believe all nations should support this UN Security Council Resolution as well. A nuclear detonation in space would have indiscriminate, ...
Nuclear Power
NEWS
How to Restart a Nuclear Power Plant - Federation of American Scientists
Federation of American Scientists
Restarting the Palisades Nuclear Plant and Keeping Momentum on Clean Energy ... The Department of Energy (DOE) announced recently that it will finance ...
Georgia's nuclear power saga unfolds with Vogtle plant - EHN - Environmental Health News
Environmental Health News
In a test of nuclear energy's future in the U.S., Georgia's Vogtle plant's final stages hint at both progress and setbacks.
Holtec's Small Modular Reactor Can Go Almost Anywhere, Even Michigan
Department of Energy
Holtec International plans to build its first two SMR-300 small modular reactors at the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan.
Nuclear Power Emergencies
NEWS
Ukraine Nuclear-Plant Attacks Prompt Emergency Watchdog Meet - Yahoo Finance
Yahoo Finance
International Atomic Energy Agency diplomats convened on Thursday to discuss safety at Europe's biggest nuclear facility. The discussions followed a ...
China's Nuclear Safety Agency Responds to Russia Radiation Levels - Newsweek
Newsweek
Khabarovsk's mayor lifted the state of emergency on Tuesday, and the source of radioactive contamination was transferred to competent authorities, ...
Russia and Ukraine urged not to 'roll the dice' at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant - The National
The National
UN's nuclear watchdog holds emergency meeting on drone attack scare at Russian-occupied site.
Nuclear War
NEWS
Nuclear War Will Happen in Europe, Russian TV Pundit Warns - Newsweek
Newsweek
But we are trying to change your future, which [currently] means 200-250 million dead or maimed Europeans. That's the price of nuclear war.".
Time
Nuclear threats have reemerged on the world stage. Frequently, Vladimir Putin warns the West that Russia is ready for nuclear war.
'Fallout' Is a Different Nolan Approach to Nuclear War - The Ringer
The Ringer
'Fallout' Is a Different Nolan Approach to Nuclear War. Unlike 'Oppenheimer'—or fellow video game adaptation 'The Last of Us'—Jonathan Nolan's new ...
Nuclear War Threats
NEWS
What's Inside the President's Nuclear Football | TIME
Time
Nuclear threats have reemerged on the world stage. Frequently, Vladimir Putin warns the West that Russia is ready for nuclear war.
Russia and Germany urge restraint as Iranian threat puts Middle East on edge | Reuters
Reuters
... war. Israel has not claimed responsibility for ... threats from Iran and its proxies is iron-clad". ... nuclear watchdog chief told his agency's 35-nation ...
New Leaked Pentagon Nuclear War Paper Targeted North Carolina - 97X
97X
The document, initially disclosed by The Daily Mail and other sources, outlines a scenario deemed by military analysts as one of the gravest threats ...