Talk:A Frigga Syndrome
From: Split-Personality
To: "The Glow in the Dark Brigade"
Subj: When Physics Fights Back.
As everybody knows, Fusion reactors can't explode. At least, that's been the assumption.
The ARSC report into the Incident on 77 Frigga has now at last been made public, and boy does it make for amusing reading - at least, as amusing as it's possible to be in a nuclear group such as ours.
6 Months ago, the S.S.C.S Challenger was conducting a routine survey mission of the asteroid belt, when it encountered a pocket of intense radiation. A sample was taken - containing activated Iron, Scandium, Yttrium, Isotopes of Lithium, Chromium, and a dozen other trace elements. It was immediately clear that the radiation was not natural in origin.
Isotopic decay indicated that whatever incident that had created the radiation trail, had occurred three months prior.
"Naturally it raised eyebrows. Radiation fields like this just don't happen naturally away from planets. My first thought was that somebody had been testing something they shouldn't have been but that didn't really fit either. It wasn't until we analysed the radiation that we found out it was potentially something far more innocent, or far more deadly. The shuttle's hull protected us of course - and I didn't need to worry too much. My curiosity had been piqued, so we moved along to investigate.
We found evidence of multiple short releases of intense radiation. It did not take much to determine they followed an orbital path, and were released by a rotating object, such as an asteroid. It took five minutes for the navigator to pinpoint the origin of the radiation. The time and orbit and rotational periods matched perfectly.
After an hour, we reached the largest and final radiation field. Inside, we found actual debris - hot fragments emitting lethal levels of radiation. Some where hot enough to be physically glowing. Others were more substantial - pieces of equipment, wreckage.
We found a single motoroid, so intensely radioactive we determined it must have been placed inside, or near, the core of a deuterium fusion reactor. Grappling it with the arm pegged the radiation monitors in the payload bay. We left it drift until someone more qualified could pick it up.
Finally we found four contaminated fire engines. Also, intensely radioactive - but not to near the same degree. The radiation seemed more to concentrate in the engine's pump units.
What sort of problem would involve pumping highly radioactive water, result in an irradiated motoroid, and leave such a debris trail? Something that damaged the reactor, and created a situation dire enough that required a motoroid to be used inside a nuclear reactor, which meant somebody had to pilot it in there. Which meant a situation dire enough for someone to take that risk and probably die in the process. A situation which continued for days.
A loss of coolant, or a pump failure? They must've had to use the trucks to pump the reactor coolant. If it'd failed, they might've used the motoroid to make a running repair. Which didn't explain the intensity of the debris. I thought maybe the cooling pumps had failed at first - or maybe a broken coolant line inside the reactor that had to be repaired. Serious, but nowhere near a Chernobyl.
But, given how serious that could've become, why wasn't there an alert put out? Or an evacuation request? None of the things you'd normally expect.
None of the pieces really fit right. I remember thinking, I love a good mystery." -Shizuka Hayama, Engineer, SCSS Challenger.
This was the first anyone in Fenspace knew of the incident on Frigga.
Six months prior, Lun Alekseeva picked herself up from the deck of the ship which bore her name.
"There was no warning. In one instant, it felt as if the entire ship jumped up, like it was slapped from beneath. It threw Pirrie - the crewman with me - to the deck. I saw lights fall loose from the ceiling of the hangare and plummet to the ground below. A moment after, the main lights in the hangar failed and the emergency backups switched on."
In the hangar bay, seperated from the reactor turbine halls by a concrete containment wall, the effects of the explosion are immediately obvious. Debris has fallen to the floor. Glass lights have shattered. The blast is powerful enough to shift the containment wall, throwing the gantry crane supporting S.C. Lun off its tracks. Thousands of tons of steel drop onto the top of the reactor containment wall.
The reactor control room is over ten kilometres from the core - far away from any sound or shock. In the control room, there is pandemonium. A dozen different alarms blare a dozen different tones. Hundreds of annunciator lights pulse, begging for attention. Above all else, the fire alarm sounds out a shrill, warbling tone.
Above all the errors, warnings and failures, one signal message cannot be avoided; Fire - Reactor Chamber.
Something has happened, but nobody quite knows what. There is no video feed. There are no maintenance staff in the containment area to investigate.
"Our first thought was an electrical surge, caused by the coils being destroyed. It explained the fire alarms, and explained why we lost all our monitoring. An electrical fire could knock it all out. We still had to handle the decay heat so we just pushed as much water into the core as we could, to keep the reactor from boiling dry. We'd have a disaster if it did." - Tatyana 'Tasha' Toptunov, statement to ARSC investigation
Nevertheless, the fire has to be dealt with. And dealing with it means figuring out just what was triggering the alarm.
At 2:05:10 DCAMS maintenance logged a request for an Exocomp to be despatch to investigate the reactor chamber
It will take fifteen minutes for the Exocomp to reach the reactor chamber through a dedicated passage. The Frigga Volunteer Fire Brigade has been waiting onsite for ten minutes. They wait outside the reactor chamber airlock, on the safe side of the containment chamber.
"We knew about the guys at Chernobyl. That was in the back of our minds of course. We sort of knew how dangerous this thing could be, if the unthinkable happened and the core was burning. But if we needed to go in there, like, absolutely needed to - we agreed we would. To stop this thing in there getting out - if we thought we could do anything we decided we wouldn't hesitate. " -Khayone van der Merwe, FVFB, statement to ARSC investigation.
"Even still, we thought it might've been a broken condenser pipe at worst. The reactor never entered anyone's mind. It just had to be intact. Fusion reactors can't explode" - Tatyana 'Tasha' Toptunov, statement to ARSC investigation.
At 2:21:19 the despatched Exocomp suffered a catastrophic failure. It lasted less than a minute after entering the reactor access passage.
At 2:21:48 DCAMS maintenance logged a second request for Exocomp despatch.
It takes another fifteen minutes for the Exocomp to reach the reactor chamber. The video feed from this Exocomp records its compatriot spinning on the ground on its side, out of control. It investigates. It moves on. The unit succumbs before reaching the reactor proper. The recorded video can be viewed here.
All that static?
That's hard radiation striking the exocomp's video sensor and overwhelming it.
At 2:40:33 DCAMS maintenance logged a third request for Exocomp despatch. The Exocomp hive rejected the request.
"That could happen if they knew they we're doing something dangerous because they were sot of emergent like that. They had a sort of sense we trusted. We sort of knew something bad had happened but we didn't know what." -Anika Daini, computer systems operator, statement to ARSC investigation.
"Somebody had to go in there and see what the hell was going on. We couldn't do anything until we knew. Jet ordered the fire department to investigate." - Tatyana 'Tasha' Toptunov, statement to ARSC investigation.
The outer hatch to the airlock can be opened by hand. It takes five minutes for the Friggan Volunteer Fire Brigade to force open the inner hatch.
"The pressure in the turbine hall was so high, a hydraulic ram had to be set up to open the door." -Khayone van der Merwe, FVFB, tatement to ARSC investigation.
"The hatch cracked and a blast of hot, smoky air rushed out. Khayone thought he could test metal. I could feel it prickling on my lips and on my tongue, even with the BA. After a moment, my dosimeter started to scream. I looked at the guys. A second dosimeter alarmed -then a third, a fourth, a fifth in the space of a heartbeat. Bambam screamed at us to run. I shouldered the ram off the door and it slammed shut - then I ran.
That door was open for less than thirty seconds. And I still got sick. I got a burn down the side of my body facing the door, and on my hand holding ram. If I'd stood in front of the door rather than the side, it might've killed me." - Kim Hyung-Jung, FVFB, tatement to ARSC investigation.
The firefighters who had tackled the fire at Chernobyl reported a metallic taste. With full positive pressure breathing apparatus, radaway and protective clothing the firefighters on Frigga reported the exact same effect. It was the taste of hard, lethal radiation. It was the taste of death itself.
Kim Hyung-Jung saved lives by shutting that door. He would recover from his radiation injuries, with an equivelant whole body dose of just over 1 Sievert. The firefighters report their radiation levels to the control room and withdraw.
"It was immediately clear that more than an electrical panel was burning," -Khayone van der Merwe, FVFB, tatement to ARSC investigation.
"The feeling was indescribable. I remember being angry at the local operators for suggesting the test continue past the abort point. I remember being angry at the equipment for not fully reporting the information we needed to make the decision. Most of all, I remember thinking, this was just the beginning," - Kurt Meier - Nuclear Commissioning Engineer. Lensherr Power Systems GmbH, statement to ARSC investigation.
"I didn't think a person could go that white." -Anika Daini, computer systems operator, statement to ARSC investigation.
Radiation alarms sound in the access tunnel, triggered by contaminated smoke.
Levels are meassured simply as 'in excess of 5 Sieverts per hour'. The monitor - designed in the 50's for measuring fallout - does not read higher. Levels were estimated at being nearly twenty times this.
Average levels in the tunnel, are just above 1 Sievert per hour.
A fatal dose is Five Sieverts within Five hours.
Radiation alarms sound in the main hanger as the Fire Brigade withdraws and decontaminates. Radiation in the Hangar proper reaches 36mSv per hour. Not great by normal measures, but nowhere near as terrible as what is contained within the reactor.
"Standby. Standby. Standby. This is an Emergency Action Message issued by the New Birmingham City Board of Directors. All Employees to Evacuate to designated Shelter Decks in Accommodation Block and await further instruction. All Employees to Evacuate to designated Shelter Decks in Accommodation Block and await further instruction. Company Stores will remain closed. Employees who remain outside of Shelter Areas do so at their own risk and no claims will be entertained." - TITANIC Automated announcement, control room VDR
"It surprised the hell out of us. What we thought were blocked vents in the ceiling coughed out puffs of dust and then started warning us to stay inside." - Gabriel Ermine, Prop. 'The Rock and Hard Place', - statement to ARSC investigation.
"Parts of the system still date back to the original mine. There're still individual server blocks doing dedicated tasks and they're cross-connected in ways that don't seem related to what they really do. We don't always know what they do or why, but completely unrelated things stop working when we take them out." - Anika Daini. Online post Here
At 3:00:00 the fire has been burning for just under an hour. The Fire Brigade is again called up to ram the hatch open. A crude secondary airlock has been jury-rigged to keep them safe. This time, a heavy motoroid is brought up to protect the operator. The armour of the motoroid and the sealed cockpit are expected to keep out the worst of the radiation, but even still, it was far too dangerous for a human being to go in there
" I was scared. If the radiation knocked out the motoroid they'd have no choice but to leave me in there and I didn't really know what radiation would do to me but it seemed like the best idea because I had some radiation hardening built in and we needed to know what happened before we decided what to do," -Anika Daini, computer systems operator, statement to ARSC investigation
At 3:14:27 the hatch was opened for a second time. Compressors forced fresh air from the hangar and access shaft into the airlock to establish positive ventilation. Two firefighters exceeded their radiation limit and were withdrawn. Anika Daini stepped inside the turbine hall.
"The steam pipes from the reactor feeding the turbine had collapsed onto the top of the turbines. A glow - not like a fire but something more like a massive electric spark shone through. I remember wondering what it might've been - that maybe it was an electrical fire in one of the field coils and we'd get away with it. Then the pressure vents in the ceiling opened and dumped to space. A column of fire roared out - looking more like a firework throwing bright sparks splashing across the machinery. The viewscreens in front of me washed out with static - I could feel it flow through me. A human would have been dead." -Anika Daini, computer systems operator, statement to ARSC investigation
"That's a bloody metal fire!" - Mackie Jaguar - Nekomi student - on control room VDR.
"The reactor is destroyed. It's destroyed and burning" - Anika Daini - on control room VDR
You really need to listen to it to get the full effect.
"Nobody said a word. We just sat and stared." - Keisuke Morita - Operations Officer Dayshift, Frigga. Statement to ARSC investigation.
"Thinking we were preventing a disaster, We pumped our entire auxiliary water reserve into the reactor chamber. Onto a burning metal fire." - Tatyana 'Tasha' Toptunov, statement to ARSC investigation.
"This was the worst of all possible situations. The reactor was destroyed and on fire. The fire was being fuelled by the water pooled in the suppression pools being drawn up by vacuum pressure each time the relief vents opened. If the chamber was opened to vacuum to extinguish the fire, all of the water would be drawn up to the remains of the core at once, resulting in an explosion which would likely destroy the reactor hall and kill everyone on the asteroid. If the fire was left to burn itself out, the remnants of the core would eventually melt through the concrete reactor floor, into the flooded suppression pools, with much the same effect." - Kurt Meier - Nuclear Commissioning Engineer. Lensherr Power Systems GmbH, statement to ARSC investigation
"Fuck me sideways," - Jet Jaguar - on control room VDR