Half Life

by Helen Cothran

  She rolled over on me, her long legs landing on my chest, her cavernous yawn sending doggie morning breath my way. It was time to get up. Despite my longing for excitement and adventure, boring realities loomed. I had to get out of the warm bed. I had to make coffee. I had to pour kibbles into Lacy’s bowl, and Lucky Charms into mine (Connor had done the shopping). I had to sit down at my computer and research nuclear waste. Still, I lay there. I scratched Lacy’s belly. She licked my ear. I could hear bird twitters in the trees outside. Somewhere in the distance crows cawed to one another. Faint metallic sounds from the yard revealed Connor already hard at work.

  I sighed.

  Let the day begin.

  .

  For the next couple of days, I researched. Pot after pot of coffee, reams of paper and one ink cartridge, eye drops and Tylenol, and one ten-ounce bag of peanut M&Ms. I started with the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, which was shut down in 2010 before it even opened. I needed to learn exactly why it had become a colossal and expensive failure, and why its demise had led to the idea of having communities across the country volunteer to take the waste. I intended to draw a straight line from Yucca Mountain to Mayor Tyler’s proposal, but as often happens with research, what seemed a straightforward path quickly branched in totally unexpected directions. What I quickly discovered was that Yucca Mountain had been built right next door to the Nevada National Security Site, where nearly a thousand atomic bombs had been detonated from 1951 to 1992. I also learned that, as the crow flies, Yucca Mountain is closer to Desert Rock, just over the Nevada-California border, than it is to Las Vegas, one hundred miles away.

  I couldn’t help myself from investigating the Nevada testing site once I stumbled upon hundreds of photographs of mushroom clouds rising 40,000 feet in the air. The images were chilling. I learned that as a result of these gigantic detonations, people who had been children in the area between 1951 and 1958 later suffered leukemia and thyroid cancer at unusually high rates. Scientists estimate that the nuclear tests released enough radioactive particles to produce 10,000 to 75,000 cases of thyroid cancer. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 allowed people living downwind of the testing site who suffered from certain cancers to receive $50,000 in compensation. To date, over 10,000 claims have been filed by “down-winders.” As if money could compensate for cancer. When the major testing ended in 1992, the site looked like Swiss cheese, pockmarked from underground explosions. The desert will be contaminated for tens of thousands of years.

  Pondering over the Nevada test site’s new neighbor, the Yucca Mountain Waste Repository, I thought the last thing we need to do is bring more radioactive crap to the region. But maybe the site was chosen precisely because it was already contaminated. Maybe people thought, what could be the harm in contaminating it just a little bit more? They must have believed that the dangerous by-products of nuclear reactions would be contained this time, held forever in a safe underground vault.

  To no one’s surprise, the majority of Nevadans opposed the repository. They referred to the bill that directed the government to build the facility at Yucca Mountain as the “screw Nevada bill.” People said it was unjust that their state, which got no electricity from nuclear power, was being asked to house the nuclear waste of the other states that did. What I found odd, though, was that residents in Nye County, where the repository was located, supported the facility. Maybe it was because nearly a thousand people, most of whom lived in Nye County, were employed to build it. I thought of Bernard Cornwell’s argument that a repository in Desert Rock would create jobs and boost the economy. It made me wonder if a majority of people here would support the mayor’s plan, just as those in Nye County had done. The thought scared me, I admit. Engineers would promise that the waste could be stored safely. But after reading about various engineering mishaps at the Nevada test site and Yucca Mountain, I did not find their reassurances reassuring.

  At Yucca Mountain, for example, the engineers at the Department of Energy and the Army Corps of Engineers assured the American people that the site was safe, that tunnels deep in the ground would prevent a disaster, and that the storage casks would not fail no matter what cataclysm might strike. Yet these same people made mistakes during construction, raising questions about their assurances. For instance, in September 2007, it was discovered that the Bow Ridge fault ran directly underneath the Yucca Mountain facility, hundreds of feet east of where geologists thought it was. Oops! The fault ran beneath some of the storage pads, not a great idea, since any major temblor could crack the pads and upset the storage casks. The pads were relocated, but as one critic put it, this was “engineering on the fly.” The phrase makes one shudder when considering that what they were engineering was a repository to store cancer-causing waste. It also raises an alarming question: If the people responsible for constructing Yucca Mountain didn’t know about the fault line, what else didn’t they know?

  The Yucca Mountain repository was guaranteed to be safe for 500,000 years. Then the Environmental Protection Agency weighed in, saying that this time period was inadequate, and it mandated that the site be safe for 1 million years. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was an exercise in futility. The human mind cannot even grasp the concept “500,000 years”—how can it grasp “1 million”? What does anyone know about how the world will be in 1 million years? I can’t even predict what’s going to happen in my own life five days from now. How can anyone build something with current materials and technology that is supposed to last that long, and guarantee that it will hold up in conditions that can’t be foreseen?

  The meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant serves as a disturbing reminder of the difficulty of doing this. Soviet engineers who built the plant undoubtedly thought they were building a state-of-the-art facility that would remain safe and productive for many decades. Despite their confidence, in 1986 one of the reactors exploded because of a catastrophic power increase that occurred during a systems test. Four hundred times more radioactive material was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II. During the crisis and immediately after, over two hundred people developed radiation sickness, and over thirty died. It is estimated that thousands of local people will contract thyroid cancer as a result of radiation exposure. The damaged reactor was eventually enclosed in a concrete sarcophagus to contain the threat. The main causes of the disaster were design flaws and noncompliance with accepted safety standards.

  In other words, human error.

  A more recent example was the 2011 partial meltdown of reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. Engineers who built the plant did not take into account the possibility that a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami with forty-five-foot waves would hit the region in a one-two punch. The earthquake and tsunami disabled the reactor cooling system, which led to explosions and radiation leaks. Radiation was found in water as far away as Tokyo, and it also tainted water pouring directly into the ocean at the plant site. Roughly ninety thousand people living within fifteen miles of the plant were evacuated, and experts predict that cleanup of the radiation will take decades. The plant is not expected to re-open.

  The Japanese government argued that the magnitude of the natural disaster was far larger than anyone could have predicted. Worse, some critics contend that the real cause of the catastrophe was collusion between government regulators and the nuclear industry, who together valued nuclear power expansion over public safety. These analysts argue that officials ignored warnings about the possibility of such a disaster and failed to take precautions, such as raising wave walls. In either scenario, humans failed in elemental ways to predict consequences. Whether due to lack of scientific knowledge or political will, human error once again paved the way for a horrific catastrophe.

  Why would it be different if a nuclear waste repository were built in Desert Rock?

  I know that a nuclear reactor is not the same thing as a nuclear waste repository. But I couldn’t help thinking t
hat the essential problem is the same: We just can’t know the world like that. Just when we think we understand something completely, life throws a curve ball. And there will always be one constant: People are what they are. Human nature is a reality that any wise course of action must take into account.

  I wondered again if my uncharacteristically emotional reaction to all things nuclear stemmed from my mother’s death. I admit, cancer terrifies me. The reality of what my mother suffered never leaves me. Her unremitting pain, her breast lopped off, the way her body wasted away to nothing but bones, her beautiful life ended way too soon, these are the memories that haunt me. To think of that suffering and loss on a grand scale, such as what could happen in a radiation disaster, made me sick and scared.

  I wondered, too, if the subject scared me because I lived in a place that might one day have a radioactive waste dump. Already we had a testing site less than a hundred miles away. Those bombs had been detonated in my neck of the woods. The Nevadans who had gotten sick from radiation poisoning were desert dwellers like me. We were the human occupants of desolate places. Lacking water and green things, the desert appears lifeless, just sand and rocks, wasted space. Who could care about such empty expanses? It was not such a leap from that question to, “What would it hurt to detonate nuclear bombs there?” Or “Why not dump nuclear waste there?” The desert is all a bunch of nothing anyway, just miles of sun-baked dirt and dead bushes.

  As a desert dweller, I take issue with this way of thinking. For one thing, humans have made deserts their home for tens of hundreds of years. The Paiute and Shoshone people have a long history in the region around Yucca Mountain, for example, and consider the mountain to be sacred. Talk to most inhabitants of Desert Rock and you’ll quickly discover that people love the desert, its open spaces that give you room to think, the fragile beauty that calms and inspires. Desert denizens are awed by the creatures and plants that share the wilderness with them, for the landscape obliterates all but the tenacious and tough. Desert animals and plants are marvels of adaptation. But despite the hardiness of those who call the desert home, life in the desert is fragile. Nothing is for sure when conditions are this dry and this hot and this windy. In that sense, deserts are the worst place to blow things up or dump dangerous stuff in because the ecosystem either never recovers or does so only after decades of healing.

  After days of this kind of emotional thinking and undisciplined research, I felt thoroughly ashamed of myself. I had broken my number one rule of being fair and impartial. Intellectually, I knew there were strong arguments for nuclear power. I knew there were convincing voices claiming nuclear waste could be safely stored. And I knew that we had to find ways to maintain a stable energy supply. My mind knew these things, but I realized that it’s easy to be rational when you have no dog in the fight. Rational thinking gets tested when your self-interest is on the line. It’s hard to be open-minded about nuclear power when someone wants to store a bunch of highly dangerous garbage down the road from you, especially when your mom died of cancer.

  Well, at least I was aware that I was losing it. That awareness would eventually lead me to reason and fair judgment. I would remedy this situation with diligent research into the pros of nuclear power. I would carefully consider the arguments of those who said that nuclear waste could be stored safely. That is what I would need to do for my book; that is what I would need to do for myself. My whole sense of who I was, personally and professionally, centered on clear thinking. No illusions, no delusions.

  It’s who I am.

  23

  After days of research, Thursday night finally arrived, and with it my chance to find out what Raul had been doing the night his brother disappeared.

  The desert was colder than a witch’s tit. The wind howled through Cholla Canyon, blasting the greasewood bushes flat. Over the roaring wind, coyotes yipped and howled. Hopefully, they weren’t spreading the word that two stupid humans and an even dumber canine were traipsing about under the full moon looking like dinner. The huge white moon bleached the desert monochrome, black shadows marking where bushes and rocks thrust out from the glowing white sand. The cold air smelled like dust.

  I felt relieved not to be alone. Eddie and Lacy had required no persuading to accompany me. Lacy will break your legs in her eagerness to get out the door for a hike. Eddie, of course, had planned to come from the beginning. I had hoped that Eddie and I would fall back into our easy intimacy during this adventure, as we had at his parent’s house Monday night, but we seemed once again out of step, quiet and awkward with each other. Maybe I felt too edgy about our mission, and Eddie too pissed at Miguel. In truth, I knew that Gabby walked between us, her ghostly presence chilling and oppressive. Though not alone, I felt lonesome.

  My uneasy feeling was not helped by the fact that I had never been comfortable out in the desert at night—the landscape felt so otherworldly it was like being on the moon, cut off from everything safe and familiar. On a windless night the desert is so quiet one can hear the slithers of rattlesnakes across the sand. But this was a windy night, and the gusts shrieked and moaned through the rocks. The glowing eyes of coyotes blinked in the distance, giving me the sensation of being watched. And as easy as it is to get lost in the desert in broad daylight, at night, with the bright sand spilling out in all directions and encircled by endless black ridges, it is way easier to become disoriented. I knew that those who get lost can go a long way in the wrong direction and might never get home.

  It didn’t help, either, that our mission felt slightly suspect. Miguel’s directions to the secret place where Raul was doing whatever he was doing were vague at best. Drive west on the dirt road that runs up to Cholla Canyon, and when the road forks, take the one less travelled, then go up the fork for a quarter mile or so, and there you’ll be. Eddie and I figured that if we took the hiking trail that led out of his parents’ neighborhood, we could cut a diagonal across the desert and come out onto the trail in about three miles. The shortcut would make it around an eight-mile round trip. Despite the distance, both of us felt it was better going on foot than in a vehicle. We had no idea what we would find out there, and neither of us felt like announcing our approach with blazing headlights and a cloud of dust. I didn’t know what Raul was up to or even if Miguel’s directions would lead us anywhere, but I thought it best to play it safe. If anything dangerous were going on, stealth and surprise were our friends. I wanted to be in control of what happened.

  Eddie, Lacy, and I trekked along the hiking trail, moving slowly toward the dirt road to Cholla Canyon. The trail would curve off to the right and intersect the dirt road Miguel had talked about. Hikers avoid the inhospitable Cholla and its surrounds. The mouth of the canyon is choked with cactus and boulders bigger than cars. The canyon siphons the wind into a roaring blast that forces any plant intrepid enough to send down roots to tilt permanently to the east. For those who enjoy sandstorms, rattlesnakes, and thorns, this is a good place to be. The dirt road runs toward the canyon mouth, then veers off to the right. Nobody comes this way except teenagers out to build bonfires and party hardy. It is a well-travelled road on Saturday nights.

  I felt edgy as we huffed along in the cold wind. The spooky landscape, the uncertainty about what we would find, and images of mushroom clouds joined forces in my mind, totally creeping me out. I had not shaken the sense of fear that my research had evoked, despite my efforts to be objective. For the first time, I felt rattled and unsure of myself as a writer. I was going to have to work through this, prove to myself that despite whatever emotions the research conjured up, I could still think critically, give all sides their due. For now, I was relieved not to be sitting in front of my laptop working it out. It was better to be out here walking, putting some distance between me and the research.

  After hiking about an hour and fifteen minutes, we came to the dirt road. Here, we abandoned the hiking trail and started up the road as it climbed toward the canyon. We veered right when we came to the fork. It was heav
y going, the roadbed a river of deep soft sand that had been chewed up by countless tires rolling over it. Faint tracks branched out to the right and left as the road curved northward, doubtless leading to campsites, fire pits, and piles of old beer bottles and used condoms. As we walked, the road began to fade back into the sand, eventually becoming nothing more than two faint tire tracks leading through the rocks.

  We had been walking a long time, too long maybe. We had seen nothing and no one. Eddie and I stopped and consulted.

  “If this is Miguel’s idea of a joke,” Eddie said after taking a swig of water from his water bottle, “I’m going to kill him.”

  Lacy flopped down on my foot. I poured water in her foldable doggy bowl and gave it to her. Over her noisy lapping, I said, “Not if I get to him first.” I ripped open a chocolate energy bar, took a bite, then broke off a piece for Lacy. She swallowed the piece whole. “What time is it?”

  Eddie pressed a button on his sport watch. The small green glow lit his face, making him look ghoulish. “Ten thirty.”

  “Shit. That’s around the time Miguel gave us. We should have come to it by now.”

  “Whatever ‘it’ is.”

  “Right.”

  We stood there, the wind buffeting us, feeling duped. The anticipation of unraveling the mystery evaporated in the cold air. Walking, the motion of putting one boot in front of the other, had felt purposeful and invigorating. Without action, the mission felt absurd. How could we have believed Miguel? He was just trying to wiggle out of trouble like he always does. I stood in the wind under the silver moon feeling pissed and tired.

  “Should we go a little further?” Eddie asked, his voice tight. I could tell he was angry too, angrier than I was at Miguel because Miguel was his brother.

  I hated to see him take responsibility for this. We had both agreed to come. “Sure, let’s go on a bit more. I’m sure we’re almost there.”