Scratchgravel Road (Josie Gray Mysteries #2)(38)
She excused herself for a moment and called Lou on her cell phone. “Do me a favor. Call Marta at home and ask her if she’ll check an apartment in town to see if anyone’s home. Ask her to check with neighbors, see if anyone has seen the tenant in the past three days.” Josie read off the name and address Sylvia had provided. “Also, check BMV to see if there’s a car registered to that name. If there is, make sure the address is the same as the one I just gave you, and have Marta check it out as well.”
Following Otto and Diego outside, Josie looked up into what seemed to be a perpetually gray sky. The rain had diminished to a drizzle that didn’t merit an umbrella, but it still made for a miserable morning. They walked down a sidewalk and through an unlocked gate.
“Inside this fenced area is what has always been referred to as ‘production.’ You can see each of the ten units I showed you on the poster inside my office. Each unit is marked with a sign outside the main entrance.” He pointed to a building on the back side of the oval track. A sign that read UNIT 7 hung beside the entrance door. “Let’s use the golf carts to keep from walking through the mud.”
The scene behind the main office building was a set out of an old black-and-white horror flick. Driving up to the plant and approaching through the front gate had made the size of the plant deceiving. Most of the buildings had massive steel pipes and drums attached to the sides and tops of the structures, and two large silos, at least thirty feet tall, were located near the back of the plant. Several buildings were connected with enclosed conveyor belts that rose twenty feet off the ground.
Two golf carts were parked by the building in front of a wooden fence that looked like a hitching post. They followed behind Diego and sat in one of the golf carts. Diego started the electric engine. “The most startling fact about this plant?” he said. “In 1956, the year it reached peak production, 2,045 workers came here every day.”
“That’s almost the size of the entire town of Artemis,” Josie said.
“The railroad brought them in and out every day. It was a long commute for some, but the pay was top-notch. Talk to the people who worked here. They were proud to serve their country. Production stopped in 1969. Transportation became too expensive.”
As they drove past the empty crane Otto said, “I thought we’d see more demolition.”
Diego nodded. “Taking the buildings down is the easy part. Removing what’s inside the buildings is the problem.”
He drove the golf cart on the track, around the center of a massive courtyard that was a muddy mess. A recent load of gravel had been spread in order to keep the machinery from getting bogged down.
Diego drove past several large structures toward a steel building surrounded on all sides by round vats and pipes. He pulled the golf cart in front of the entrance, which was gated by chain-link fence. Diego continued with what sounded like a prepared tour speech as they walked through the gate to the front door.
“Unit Seven made enriched uranium ingots during the fifties. Today we’re experimenting with a waste stabilization project. The biggest issue we face at plants like this one is what to do with all the waste. For every pound of uranium that was refined, two and a half pounds of waste was created. And who wants it? With Yucca Mountain lost in political purgatory we’re back to containing it here the best we can.”
Josie pointed behind the production buildings to where hundreds of black metal barrels were stacked on wooden pallets. “So we have our own little Yucca Mountain here in Artemis? Except it’s above ground and could leak into our groundwater.”
Diego opened the building’s door for Josie and stepped aside to allow her and Otto entrance. He smiled sternly at her as she walked past him. “That’s why I’m here. To make sure that does not happen.”
Josie looked around the room and felt her stomach seize up in a knot. At the back end of the building a group of four people dressed in white hazmat suits with helmets were working on a machine that was about the size of her kitchen. A tank was attached to each person’s back and she assumed these were some type of respirators. Large fans and machinery roared throughout the building.
Diego placed a hand on Josie’s back and talked close to her ear to be heard above the noise. “Don’t worry,” he said, pointing to the men in white. “The suits are precautionary. Better to be safe.” He gestured toward the rest of the building. “Would you like a quick tour before we meet Skip?” Diego yelled.
Josie and Otto both nodded and he motioned for them to follow. They began walking over concrete where steel beams had been filed down to the ground, revealing that something had obviously been removed. “This area of the plant was where the uranium fuel core was finished. The core was then shipped to other factories where it was fed into reactors to make nuclear weapons.” He walked them across the plant floor to a wall with several metal doors. “The first two rooms are storage areas. One contains chemicals waiting for disposal. The other is dismantled apparatus waiting for shipment.” He approached the third door and opened it. “This room houses our security tapes. Part of our contract with the government promises the site is secure. We have an expansive security system to ensure that.”
Josie noted that the room housing the security tapes wasn’t locked. She wondered if the security operations at the plant were mostly for show. She imagined very few people not already associated with the plant ever visited. But then, who would want to?