Chapter 521 - 510: Fight Poison with Poison_1

In the Edo Television Station’s studio, Johnson was speaking to the camera with a serious expression, discussing the severity of the issue:

"...According to our investigation, approximately over 30,000 square kilometers are within the range affected by radioactive dust, close to 50% of which is land area, where nearly 200,000 people live. These 200,000 individuals have been continuously exposed to the harm of radiation.

From the air they breathe to their drinking water, local vegetables, and snacks, all have been contaminated to various degrees. Marine pollution is even more serious, as sea fish carrying radioactive materials can also transmit pollutants to humans through consumption.

According to the direction of ocean currents, Edo, with a population of 37 million, is also within the impact range. The surrounding seas have been contaminated by radioactive water over the past few years!"

The female host next to him was stunned, the TV station had only mentioned before the program that an IAEA expert would take a little time to say a few words, but they hadn’t expected such explosive content—these weren’t in the dialogue script they’d been given beforehand!

The key point now was that it was a live TV broadcast, and countless people were watching the program on their TVs, meaning the whole Island Country knew!

But Johnson showed no signs of stopping, continuing solemnly:

"The Fukushima contamination issue has already become more than a local ecological disaster. It has an impact that covers the entire western Pacific with over 4 billion people, effectively becoming a global challenge.

The International Atomic Energy Agency will decide to list the Fukushima contamination issue as a top-level project and mobilize international organizational strength to solve it. We’re responsible not only to the citizens of Island Country but also to all mankind, and we will take full responsibility!"

...

In a sushi restaurant by the street, Academician Zhou and Tomarsov were eating while watching the TV in the restaurant and observing the reactions of the diners.

This was not a high-end restaurant, so there was a high volume of people and it was quite chaotic. Many had gathered around when the keyword "nuclear contamination" appeared on the screen and listened intently to Johnson’s frightening analysis.

Quite a few people unconsciously put down their rice balls while listening, after all, the seaweed in them was harvested from Edo Bay.

After the news broadcast ended, the female host on the TV started to speak with a stutter, and the diners finally snapped out of their trance and dispersed in a hubbub, all heading in the same direction as if by unspoken consensus.

Tomarsov finished off the remaining sushi in one gulp and looked puzzled at Academician Zhou:

"Davarish, where are they all heading?"

"This... I think they’re probably going to stock up on drinking water or rice or something."

Zhou was quite familiar with this scene; his mother-in-law had lugged more than a hundred bags of salt and nearly half a ton of rice from the supermarket a few years ago, and they still had these supplies at home.

Wait, it wouldn’t take long for Johnson’s news to spread to the mainland. They wouldn’t start stockpiling again, would they?

After hearing this explanation, Tomarsov just shrugged his shoulders and then asked the owner to keep bringing more dishes. As a Russian accustomed to the extreme cold of the north, they were used to storing large amounts of food.

The citizens of Edo worried about the sushi being a problem, but they were the ones aware of the inside story.

Edo Bay was definitely affected, but the pollution brought by the ocean current wasn’t so exaggerated. Besides, Tomarsov still had a Geiger counter in his pocket, which hadn’t gone off, so it was safe to eat.

While waiting for the stingy Island Country’s chef to serve more dishes, Tomarsov finally stopped talking and brought up the business about the nuclear power plant.

"Zhou, what do you think should be done about the reactor core? The yield of a ground drilling bomb is a bit hard to control."

Zhou shook his head, he was currently considering whether to make a call home to stop his mother-in-law from hoarding more supplies.

Tomarsov bowed his head and used his smartphone to make notes, contemplating the specific plan formulation.

The so-called 15-megaton airburst mentioned yesterday—was of course meant to scare Kobayakawa. This matter has been kept tightly under wraps and has not leaked out; they’ve decided to hold on to it a while longer before releasing it.

The Fukushima incident is not that simple; first of all, the sequence of events needs to be clarified:

In 2011, the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that occurred in the sea destroyed the First Nuclear Power Station’s transmission towers in Fukushima, causing the reactor cooling circuit to disconnect and fail.

This nuclear power station employed second-generation boiling water reactor technology, with six reactors sharing one cooling circuit. At the time, units 1-3 were operating and units 4-6 were undergoing maintenance. Once cooling was lost, the temperature inside the reactors rose rapidly.

If not stopped, the ever-increasing temperature of the reactor core would melt through its surroundings and continuously sink towards the earth’s core, along with the potential for explosions.

This problem was not much different from the Chernobyl incident. The immediate solution would be to extract the fuel rods to stop the reaction and bury the reactor with a large amount of sand and stone. Once confirmed safe, the surface radiation issues could be addressed.

At the time, the power company’s engineers suggested injecting a large quantity of boron-containing seawater into the reactor to cool it down, but Edo Electric Power Company hesitated for over 20 hours, and that hesitation led to problems.

Within the next three days, explosions occurred successively in reactors 1, 2, and 3, while reactor 4 released a huge amount of contamination into the air and onto the ground.

What’s absurd is that Edo Electric Power Company hesitated again, waiting over a month until all units’ pressure vessels were scrapped before they decisively sealed off the reactors, resulting in a greatly amplified level of contamination due to human factors.

Even now, reactors 1 and 2 are still reacting, continuously generating heat and pollution, and it is estimated that they will not stop for another 30 years.

The nuclear wastewater issue is partly due to the seawater initially injected into the reactor cores, while the rest is contaminated groundwater. In fact, much of the latter has already seeped out and is beyond any possibility of treatment.

So the question arises, why did Edo Electric Power Company hesitate?

This brings us to a byproduct of uranium fission: plutonium, the fissile material for "Fat Man."

River Electric Company was reluctant to give up this plutonium. They had even gone out of their way to buy nuclear waste from around the world—not to be philanthropic, but to obtain this substance.

Sealing the reactor meant not just financial loss but, more importantly, the loss of a significant source of plutonium.

For some covert objectives, this led to the pollution escalating to an uncontrollable degree. Otherwise, if they had acted decisively at the time, there wouldn’t be so many problems.

It was only after on-site inspections that the expert group realized the problem was much more serious than they had been led to believe. Although not as exaggerated as Johnson claimed, an airburst to eliminate radiation was absolutely necessary.

It was not possible to use tritium bombs; instead, a "clean" hydrogen bomb with a primary fusion yield of over 3 megatons was needed. However, the yield couldn’t be too large—capped at 10 megatons—so the requirements for the hydrogen bomb itself were quite strict. The yield of the implosion core had to be precisely controlled, or it would worsen the contamination.

Secondly, there were the two still-burning reactor cores. The best solution was still to destroy them using ground drilling nuclear warheads, also primarily hydrogen bombs.

However, this was problematic. A ground drilling bomb too powerful could affect the surrounding environment, and one too small would not provide a neutralizing effect. Additionally, the experts had communicated and roughly understood that none of them had the right specifications readily available.

In practice, the "nuclear control" plan might require a near 10-megaton airburst bomb and 2 to 3 ground drilling bombs. The cost for redeveloping and modifying nuclear weaponry truly was not low, and the consumption of manpower and resources was no small figure. Edo Electric Power Company should really thank the IAEA for taking the initiative.

UK experts also suggested trying a 500-kiloton initial test burst to verify the effect, which was readily available.

Thinking about his involvement in both the lunar demolition and the terrestrial pollution remediation—these two arduous tasks—Tomarsov felt the heavy pressure weighing down on him.