Chapter 588 - 576: Why not enjoy it

Tsushima Hisaichi’s "they" clearly referred to the IAEA organizers who were making a huge profit under the guise of cleanup operations.

Although it was publicly claimed that the IAEA’s actions were purely unprofitable, the authorities of the Island Country saw everything clearly.

First, the more than two billion US dollars raised for disaster victims were far from exhausted; the funds could barely cover all expenses before the emergency relief teams withdrew from the controlled zone.

Then, using nuclear explosions as a gimmick, they used the privilege of the observation area to attract tourists to buy package deals. The allure of nuclear bombs was enough to draw crowds willing to spend a fortune on it.

Ordinary people couldn’t simply sail there on their own; the best offshore areas were controlled by the IAEA, and without their permission, it was impossible for any boats to sneak in. After all, it was the mightiest fleets of Blue Star enforcing the blockade, and no one blind enough to dare a forced entry.

After initial rejections, protests, and futile struggles, the Island Country’s authorities also began to figure out how they could benefit from the situation, and even the Jianghu Electric Power Company managed to obtain some transit permits for the Fukushima offshore areas under its name.

Then, they too began to madly sell boat tickets. After all, the sea was vast enough to accommodate numerous vessels.

At this time, having the advantage of being local, they were able to mobilize even more ships compared to the IAEA. Tsushima Hisaichi merely needed to crunch the numbers briefly to understand the magnitude of the revenues involved.

That was just the income from tourists. In fact, the domestic potential consumer power was even greater.

Apart from a very few who had experienced it firsthand, the citizens of the Island Country had never seen a real nuclear explosion, nor even a ballistic missile attack. Being closer made it naturally more convenient for observation, only without the fanfare with which foreign tourists were publicized.

So this was the reason why Nakayama Juji openly endorsed the IAEA’s cleanup effort without facing much hindrance—the legislators were too busy diving into this new business opportunity. As for the issue of public image? That would just have to be dealt with later by having relevant responsible persons bow and apologize.

Nakayama Juji silently watched the utterly shameless vermin in front of him and finally couldn’t bear it, shouting:

"Tsushima, you should be ashamed for the citizens!"

"But just yesterday you arranged for your own shipping company to obtain a passage permit."

Tsushima Hisaichi’s response was seamlessly connected, immediately choking off the rest of Nakayama Juji’s words.

Between them, only a sincere eye contact remained. Nakayama Juji eventually couldn’t keep up the pretense anymore.

"I have taken on the most responsibility, I must receive the compensation I deserve!"

"Understood, understood... And this also benefits your space technology cooperative plans. When our astronauts enter space from Tanegashima, the citizens will surely understand your difficulties!"

This statement was quite comforting to Nakayama Juji, who touched his chest with a sense of gravity and said:

"It is all for the sake of the entire citizenry; it’s only right to take on some infamy!"

...

Hefei.

"You’ve come here to replace the ignition mechanism of the hydrogen bomb with a laser?"

As the chief responsible for the EAST project, Fu Mingdong was very surprised by today’s visitors.

As a fully superconducting tokamak nuclear fusion experimental device on par with ITER, EAST could be said to be in a leading position worldwide, and EAST’s team was mostly young.

The average age of today’s visitors was significantly higher. Among them was a heavy-hitter along with Yu Min, who arrived in a wheelchair—not because of leg problems, but simply to conserve some energy.

Others also came from the Nuclear Science Institute, and their line of work evidently had little to do with EAST.

EAST aims to usher in an energy revolution and bring humanity into a new era, whereas the business of the Nuclear Science Institute is to figure out ways to pull the entire world back to the Stone Age.

Following Yu Min was a middle-aged man who appeared to be under fifty, introducing himself as Ai Quan.

Yu Min, "What we pursue is the power of the sun, as do you, so there will be many topics of common interest."

Ai Quan followed up with an explanation,

"We are currently designing a new type of nuclear bomb with a billion-ton yield, but traditional methods merely pile on raw materials; we hope to find a more efficient and cleaner way."

In a previous tender project of United Mining, the five parties reached an agreement to conduct research on a two-billion-ton yield super hydrogen bomb, and subsequently, they immediately launched related plans.

Mere enhancement of yield was not a difficult task, as similar configurations to the three-phase bomb could virtually be stacked indefinitely.

The primitive hydrogen bomb was an atomic bomb wrapped in a layer of fusion material; the three-phase bomb additionally had a layer of Uranium-235 on top of that, undergoing fission-fusion-fission processes in explosions, hence the name three-phase bomb.

Such stacking methods could make the yield of hydrogen bombs incredibly large; a two-billion-ton yield was nothing more than piling up materials.

However, the Nuclear Science Institute postponed this approach because such gigantic three-phase bombs, weighing over fifty tons, lost any real combat significance, and the fusion power accounted for only half of the power, the other half coming from fission, which didn’t sound too good.

Building such a super three-phase bomb would also require a substantial amount of raw materials and cost a great deal, although it had a chance of approval, but controlling the budget is an instinctive behavior in domestic scientific research.

In this context, Yu Min proposed designing a completely new explosion configuration that would use fusion as the primary means of enhancing power, preferably in a chain reaction, so that the new configuration could potentially have a fusion power ratio of over 99%, and the yield could effortlessly reach tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of tons, with the weight and cost being much cheaper than the three-phase bomb.

And the best model for designing a nuclear fusion configuration is undoubtedly the sun, and the deepest domestic research on the sun is probably only to be found at the Hefei scientific research base.

Having heard Ai Quan’s words, Fu Mingdong licked his lips and then shook his head vigorously,

"This magnitude of chain reaction... I can’t quite imagine it. If this could be achieved, we could indeed take a big step forward in controlled nuclear fusion; a completely new configuration is indeed necessary.

Moreover, it’s probably not enough for us to simply brainstorm together; we also need to conduct thermonuclear experiments, which means exploding hydrogen bombs, many of them, which is nearly impossible."

"No, we have time."

Ai Quan, "I can tell you... there will be a lot of hydrogen bombs being detonated on the Moon, and we will have ample observational opportunities to collect data up close and unrestrictedly, so we have the confidence to propose a new configuration."

"You actually... "

It took a while for Fu Mingdong to completely confirm the crazy hydrogen bomb mining operation of United Mining, which surprised him greatly before he snapped back to reality.

"Well, if that’s the case, then there is indeed hope, but let’s think... In the future, a few tons of warheads could have yields of hundreds of millions or even billions of tons; the Third World War could indeed blast humanity back to the Stone Age."

"Rest assured, we have considered these issues even more thoroughly, otherwise, we wouldn’t just maintain such a small nuclear arsenal."

Ai Quan smiled, feeling that Fu Mingdong was being overly anxious,

"Perhaps, in the future, it will rather be these super bombs that save mankind. Think about those asteroids that could strike Earth; to them, millions of tons, even tens of millions of tons, is nothing more than a tickle, the same goes for resource development.

In space, that’s essentially the strongest force humanity has."