Radiation Hazard (The Stasis Stories #3) Read online

  Radiation Hazard

  The Stasis Stories

  #3

  Laurence E Dahners

  Copyright 2020

  Laurence E Dahners

  Kindle Edition

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  Author’s Note

  This is the third book of the Stasis Stories

  Though this book can “stand alone” it’ll be much easier to understand if read as part of the series including:

  A Pause in Space-Time (The Stasis Stories #1) and

  The Thunder of Engines (The Stasis Stories #2)

  I’ve minimized the repetition of explanations that would be redundant to the earlier books in order to provide a better reading experience for those who are reading the series.

  Other Books and Series

  by Laurence E Dahners

  Series

  The Ell Donsaii series

  The Vaz series

  The Bonesetter series

  The Blindspot series

  The Proton Field series

  The Hyllis family series

  Single books (not in series)

  The Transmuter’s Daughter

  Six Bits

  Shy Kids Can Make Friends Too

  For the most up to date information go to

  Laurence E Dahners website

  Or the Amazon Author page

  Table of Contents

  Other Books and Series

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Epilogue

  Author’s Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books and Series

  Prologue

  Kaem Seba’s early life

  Emmanuel was sitting with his wife Sophia the day after Kaem’s birth. A doctor entered the room. She asked if Sophia was feeling well. When Sophia said she was feeling much better, the doctor said, “I’m your son Kaem’s pediatrician. We should talk about his health. May I sit down?”

  A ball of ice formed in Emmanuel’s stomach as he nodded. What’s the matter with Kaem? he wondered in horror.

  “I’m afraid I have some unwelcome news,” the doctor said, eyes on Emmanuel. “Does anyone in your family have sickle cell anemia?”

  “Yes… my uncle,” Emmanuel said, his life crashing around him as he thought of his uncle’s short miserable life. “But… wouldn’t Kaem have to get a sickle gene from both myself and Sophia?” He glanced at his wife. “She’s white. She can’t be carrying the sickle gene… can she?”

  “Well, actually, it is possible she could,” the doctor said, “though unlikely. A very few white people do have the sickle gene. But, no, in this case, your son Kaem has one gene for sickle hemoglobin, presumably from you, and another gene for thalassemia. The thalassemia gene causes anemias, some severe, and it’s common in peoples whose ancestors lived around the Mediterranean, including those of Italian descent such as your wife.” She frowned, “People who have one of each of the genes are said to have sickle-thalassemia. It’s quite rare.”

  Emmanuel looked at his wife. She was wiping away tears. She said, “My great aunt died of thalassemia…” her throat worked, then she croaked, “Is Kaem going to die too?”

  Looking sympathetic, the doctor said, “We’re pretty sure Kaem has what’s called sickle beta plus thalassemia, a milder form. He will also have some of the effects of sickle cell disease with red blood cells that sickle and occasionally clog blood vessels. Some medications can help with this. He’ll also be quite anemic, the main characteristic of thalassemia. Occasional transfusions will be needed to help with that problem.”

  Sophia said, “It sounds like you’re just treating the symptoms? Isn’t there a cure?”

  The doctor slowly shook her head. “Not now anyway. We hope someday there’ll be a way to repair the abnormal genes.”

  They talked to the doctor for a while longer but the sentence had already been passed.

  Emmanuel’s dream of playing soccer with his son was doomed.

  And how are we going to pay for his care?

  ***

  Because Kaem was physically impaired by his blood disease, Emmanuel tended to think of his son as disabled in all ways. When the boy began to bring home report cards, his father expected them to be poor. His bias for this outcome was so strong, that when Kaem’s grades were good, Emmanuel thought the school was likely grading too easily—that all the kids must be getting good marks through some kind of grade inflation.

  When Emmanuel and Sophia gradually came to understand that their child wasn’t just smart, but was the brightest child in his grade, they began to dream that he might somehow attend college. They couldn’t afford to send him, they always struggled to find work in their adopted home town of Valen. Besides, the costs of Kaem’s health care that weren’t covered by Medicaid made it difficult enough just making ends meet.

  They hoped the school’s counselor would be able to find Kaem a scholarship, but she advised them that Kaem didn’t qualify for any such scholarships. It would be many years before they realized the pleasant seeming counselor held an inherent bias that, no matter his grades, a scrawny African-American kid like Kaem couldn’t possibly succeed in college.

  ~~~

  Sophia had a friend amongst the Lutheran community. The Lutherans had helped her and Emmanuel immigrate to the United States. This woman let the Sebas have her family’s old computers whenever they upgraded. Even when the computers weren’t working, Kaem managed to salvage them. He began learning online. First to repair computers. Then to code. Then math. Then science. After finishing high school, he got a job as a clerk, but when he was at home, he was on one of those computers from the time he woke until after he should’ve been asleep.

  His parents worried that he was wasting time and playing games, but when they checked in on him, he always seemed to be on educational sites, or learning from videos, or reading online textbooks.

  When he told them that, out of the blue, he’d been offered a scholarship by a man named Curtis, they’d been stunned, thinking at first it must be some kind of scam.

  When Kaem left for UVA, they were sad, yet very proud. However, they worried that being the smartest kid in a small town like Valen would still leave him overwhelmed and unable to compete at a big University where all the kids were smart.

  When he finally showed them his grades, grades that proved that he couldn’t just compete at college, but could excel, they were ecstatic.

  Then he told them he had a job and that—this part seemed impossible to believe—his new boss would pay for Emmanuel’s cancer treatments.

  Now that Emmanuel was recovering from cancer, he’d decided to learn about this company, Staze, that Kaem was working for.

  To Emmanuel’s dismay, Staze didn’t have a website. Google searches didn’t find any record of such a company.

  Emmanuel turned from the computer where he’d been showing Sophia the results of his searches. “Where do you think all that money really came from?”

  She shrugged miserably. “You think he stole it?”

  He cleared a suddenly tight throat. “I can’t believe Kaem would do such a thing, but…” Emmanuel nodded, “But the story he told us doesn’t hold water either.”

  Round-eyed, Sophia said, “He isn’t physical enough to rob a bank!”

  “He’s good with computers. Maybe he’s a found a way to hack in and siphon
money out of people’s accounts?”

  ***

  The summer before Kaem Seba’s senior year at UVA

  “So, we’ll give you a regimen of medications intended to release your HSCs from your marrow,” Dr. Raiens said. “HSCs are hematopoietic stem cells, the cells that—”

  Kaem Seba interrupted, “The cells that form red blood cells. I know. What percent of them are you able to release?”

  Raiens blinked in surprise. “That’s correct. Um, we can’t answer that question about the percentage very well because, though we can count on how many we release into the bloodstream, we don’t have a precise way to know how many you had. The majority though.”

  “Ah,” the young man said, nodding.

  Raiens watched Seba a moment for more questions, then proceeded. “So, the HSCs are released into your bloodstream where we’re able to capture them with a procedure called leukapheresis. It separates them from the rest of your blood…” She paused, decided from his expression that Seba had understood that part, then continued. “We take the HSCs to the lab where we use a modified virus to inject genes into them that both disable your sickle gene and insert genes that make your cells produce fetal hemoglobin instead.”

  “Why fetal instead of adult hemoglobin?”

  “Fetal hemoglobin actually carries a little more oxygen than the adult form.”

  Seba gave her an intent look, “You do remember that I have thalassemia too, right?”

  Raiens nodded. “The viral vector will impair the thalassemia gene too.”

  “Okay,” Seba said. “I understand that much of it. What I’m worried about is what I’ve read about the need to have chemo or radiation to kill off some of my marrow.”

  Raiens nodded again, “That’s because the HSCs that weren’t released into your bloodstream and captured by the leukapheresis won’t be affected by the gene therapy. They’ll keep making sickle hemoglobin. There’ll be less of it, but it can still cause problems.”

  “But chemo and radiation therapy can’t be good for the rest of me. Especially my other marrow cells. It seems like after that, I’d have problems with my other blood cells too, not just the ones that make red blood cells.”

  “You’ve read up on this haven’t you?” Raiens said. She continued, “The latest thing is to use what’s called CAR T-cell therapy to specifically target your remaining HSCs.”

  Seba said, “I know something about CAR T-cell therapy because my dad had it for lymphoma.”

  “Ah. So, we generate T-cells that attack your old HSCs. These T-cells are very specific for HSCs so they won’t damage other marrow cells. When we do the gene therapy on the HSCs we harvest, we also modify the antigens on their exterior so the T-cells will avoid attacking the new ones that’re making good hemoglobin.” Raiens frowned at him for a moment. “The thing is, we’re talking about some very expensive treatments here. Ones that may not be covered by your insurance.”

  “I don’t have insurance,” the young man said. “But I do have money. How much would the plan you just described cost?”

  “Oh,” Raiens said sympathetically, “I’m sorry. It’s… very, very expensive?”

  “I understand that. Remember my dad had CAR T-cell therapy for lymphoma. I assume this costs more than that?”

  Raiens nodded. “I don’t know exactly how much it’ll be, but probably at least double the cost of the lymphoma treatment… and that’s if nothing goes wrong.”

  Though Raiens expected Seba to rock back in dismay, he just gave an affirmative nod as if she’d told him no more than he’d expected. “It’ll be a month or two before I can do it. Once I’ve got the money and my life arranged, how do I set it up?”

  “Got the money?” Raiens parroted back at him. “Um, how are you expecting to come by that much money?”

  Seba looked thoughtfully out the window as if considering how to answer. He said, “I’m one of the owners of a business. I should be able to draw that much sometime in the next few months.” He turned to look at Raiens and saw something in her eyes. “It’s not drug money,” he said.

  “I wasn’t saying—” Raiens said, embarrassed.

  “No, but I could tell what you were thinking.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Seba said. “It’s a new company you won’t have heard of. It produces a new material that’s very useful to industry. Nothing illegal.”

  “Um,” Raiens said, trying to get her mind back to his original question. “When you’re ready to proceed, you can make an appointment again. We’d go over everything again, do some lab work and, then set up your leukapheresis.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Seba said, getting up. He shook her hand pleasantly as he left.

  She couldn’t help wondering what kind of business he was really in. New industrial materials? I hope so, but it seems unlikely.

  ***

  Ralph Williams looked up at a call from Jared Blank, one of the new people the company’d hired. “Bossman, I got a reading says the pressure’s not right in the Number two ECCS (Emergency Core Cooling System).”

  “Pressure’s not right?!” Ralph thought, checking the readout on his own display and seeing the pressure was normal. What am I working in, a village of idiots? How are they hiring people this stupid to staff a freaking nuclear reactor! He counted to three like the fruit loops in Human Resources had told him he should, but still couldn’t keep from yelling. “What the hell do you mean, ‘not right,’ Jared? You need to tell us what it is and, just in case someone here doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be, you need to say whether it’s high or low.”

  Ralph’s furious focus on Jared kept him from noticing that a red idiot light on his board had started blinking. It indicated a loss of pressure in the high compression coolant lines that fed the reactor. Corrosion in one of the high-pressure lines had been gradually opening a fissure in one of the pipes. Unfortunately, the flaw was at a location poorly accessible to the ultrasonic scans intended to find such damage. The crack had just split open.

  The line needed high compression to keep the water inside it liquid. Now that it’d been decompressed through the crack, the water in the line quickly flashed into steam. Large steam bubbles rapidly formed in the circuit. Critically, one formed in the main impeller that pushed the coolant through the line—rendering that pump almost completely ineffective. Another large bubble swelled inside the reactor itself. Such a steam bubble was ineffective at removing the heat produced by the ongoing nuclear reaction—thus allowing a rapid increase in the temperature of the core.

  Jared looked nervously back over his shoulder. “I think it’s high, Bossman.”

  “You THINK?! For God’s sake Jared. is, it, High? Or, is, it, LOW? What’s the goddamned number?”

  “Um,” Jared glanced back again, “it’s high, Bossman. It’s, um, in the red.”

  “What’s the goddamned NUMBER?” Ralphs screamed.

  “Ralph!” This shout came from Kelly Smits, an old hand. “Coolant pressure’s down. Way down! I think we’ve got a LOCA (Loss Of Coolant Accident)!”

  Ralph looked at his board, suddenly seeing that several red lights were blinking. Coolant pressure was down and falling rapidly. Shit! It’s gotta be a huge leak! “Shut everything down!” he yelled, “Scram the core!” He punched the scram button on his control board and yelled “Shut everything down!” again for emphasis. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Smits hit the redundant scram button on his board. The scram buttons cut power to the electromagnets that held the—neutron-absorbing boron carbide—control rods up out of the core. With the electromagnets off, in theory, the control rods fell—under the force of gravity—down into the core and slowed the nuclear chain reaction that was producing the heat that boiled the water. In a chain reaction, neutrons released by one uranium fission event struck a nearby uranium atom and induced another fission event in that atom, but if the neutrons were absorbed by boron or cadmium in control rods the number of fission events fell rapidly.


  In theory.

  In practice a cluster of the control rods had gotten sticky and had occasionally stayed partially elevated, requiring activation of failsafe motors that forced them down. They were due to be repaired or refurbished at the next scheduled maintenance event three days hence.

  Ralph was focused on the leak and didn’t notice that the cluster of control rods remained elevated.

  No one else noticed either.

  The failsafe motors weren’t activated. There was a circuit that activated the motors automatically, but after a test on the last shift, the circuit had been left off. And, during the check-in procedures at the beginning of this shift, it’d been missed.

  ~~~

  Across the room, Jared panicked. Does, “shut everything down,” mean I should shut down the ECCS? he wondered. He turned to ask, but Jared had learned not to bother Mr. Williams when he looked busy. Almost anytime, bothering Mr. Williams resulted in some shouting. If the man was busy, talking to him was a recipe for the kind of screaming that removed some of your hide. Just now Ralph Williams looked frantically busy. His face was red the way it got just before he started playing whack-a-mole on anyone who popped up. Jared looked behind himself at Ace Berry, an older man Jared had learned to ask when he was in doubt. Ace was white as a sheet and didn’t look like he’d take kindly to questions at the moment either. Taking a deep breath, Jared hit the shutdown switch for the Number 2 Emergency Core Cooling System.

  Jared looked around the room, wondering what he should do next. Wait, Mr. Williams said to “shut everything down.” Jared looked around once again, hoping for a friendly face but finding none. With a trembling hand, he reached out and shut down the Number 1 ECCS as well.