Voyage of the Devilfish

Pacino visualized the geometry of the sea around him. He had always kept the ship’s position in reference to a polynya committed to memory, just like they’d taught in Prospective Commanding Officer School. He estimated the ship to be only one nautical mile from the southwest edge of the polynya… one mile, only 2000 yards, and they could vertical surface as if nothing had happened. A quick radio call for help and this nightmare could be over. Pacino’s lifted spirits would have been crushed if he could have taken a single glance at Delaney’s reactor plant control panel. The 2000 yards to the polynya might as well have been 2000 miles. Matt Delaney looked over Manderson’s shoulder at the reactor plant control panel. It was like the Three Mile Island nuclear accident all over again and there was nothing he could do about it. The reactor leak from the starboard loop had not been completely isolated by the reactor main-coolant cutoutvalves as he had hoped. The gate valves, designed to seal the coolant system off from a massive pipe rupture, had failed them. Probably from the shock. All the time the ship had been driving toward the polynya the starboard reactor main-coolant cutoutvalves had been leaking and dumping the radioactive coolant into the reactor-compartment bilges. The reactor’s lifeblood was spilling into the bilges, setting off radiation alarms aft of frame 57, the entrance to the reactor-compartment tunnel. Delaney had tried to compensate by charging to the coolant system with the charge pump and the valve-operating waterflasks, but he was soon out of pure water. The number one and two charging water-storage tanks, the charging-water day tank and the valve-operating waterflasks were dry. The evaporator, which made pure water from seawater, had been out of commission since the collision. So Delaney had been forced to charge seawater into the coolant system in spite of the fact that the plant had been specifically designed to prevent the introduction of seawater into the delicate nuclear systems. The chlorine could corrode the pressure vessel within hours, maybe minutes, in addition to the contaminants in the seawater becoming radioactive. The seawater hose had been hooked up and the seawater was charged in, but the high-pressure charging pump could only barely keep up with the loss rate, and finally the overworked pump had burned up in a cloud of black smoke. With no water makeup, the loss-of-coolant accident began. While Delaney watched, helpless, the level in the pressurizer tank dropped from 65 inches to 10 in less than a minute. The pressurizer was what kept the 500-degree water liquid instead of steam; when the pressurizer emptied, the entire system would boil to steam. The reactor siren broke the eerie silence of the room.

“Low-pressure port loop, sir,” Manderson shouted.

“Low-pressure cutback, group one rods!” The reactor “realized” it was depressurizing and was trying to lower power by driving in control rods, as it was programmed to do.

“Override the cutback and silence the alarm,” Delaney ordered. He would get every last ounce of propulsion out of the plant — it was a goner anyway, and who knew, maybe they were only a shiplength from thin ice… As the level in the pressurizer dropped to zero, water still leaking out of the system, the little water remaining began to boil to steam in the core. The siren, just silenced a moment before, wailed again in the small room, which seemed suddenly even smaller.

“Low-level pressurizer, sir. Heater cutout.”

As pressure dropped, Delaney ordered the plant to be shut down. “Manderson, insert a full scram.”

“Rods aren’t dropping, sir. The fuel elements must be melting!” The nuclear reactor became uncovered, boiling away the last remaining coolant. The fuel elements in the core melted, fuel pooled in the lower head of the reactor vessel and began to melt through the thick steel. Up to this point Delaney hadn’t notified Pacino in control — what the hell could the captain do about it? An alarm bell sounded in the room, announcing the high radiation in the engine room. Delaney pulled the microphone down out of the overhead.

“CAPTAIN, ENGINEER. REACTOR SCRAM. CORE IS UNCOVERED AND FUEL IS MELTING. BATTERY’S DEAD AND STEAM POWER IS GONE. RECOMMEND YOU EMERGENCY BLOW TO THE … TO THE ICE.” Delaney put down the microphone. Suddenly it was very cold in the engine room.

FS KALININGRAD

Vlasenko lowered his aching body down the rungs of the ladder, now at a crazy 50-degree angle to the vertical. Actually he came more over than down — and stepped over a limp form… Novskoyy. Some previous head injury must have knocked out the admiral with more force than his punch. He hadn’t really connected solidly.