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Post by blackmonk on Nov 17, 2010 11:13:14 GMT
Meltdown
Ray Kytle
Panther
1978 The blurb: Someday – maybe quite soon – the terrifying contents of this book could really happen…
At the Sand Beach nuclear power-plant, head physicist Paul Hanson suspects that the supposedly fail-safe reactor system has a built-in flaw that could trigger off an ‘accidental’ atomic explosion. Torn between professional loyalty and the safety of thousands, Hanson realises that the cost of rectifying the lethal defect could mean commercial suicide for his company. But what neither Hanson nor his superiors know, is that one revenge-obsessed man with access to the reactor’s heart has lunatic designs of his own which – if not discovered in time – will wreak the worst devastation the world has seen since Hiroshima…
Compelling, shocking and totally plausible, Meltdown is a novel of high-voltage drama that reads like a blueprint for tomorrow’s potential disaster… The novel opens with the construction of the nuclear power-plant highlighting mistakes made in the rush to completion – stripped threads on pipework, incorrectly wired circuit boards, a poor mix of concrete. The mistakes go unnoticed and the plant goes on line. Over time the man in charge begins to doubt the plants safety and, meanwhile, an employee is seeking to destroy the reactor. He blames the plant for the deformity of his son, a “thrashing, screaming creature” with flippers instead of limbs. In a way I felt kind of cheated with this book after being grabbed by Chris Foss’ great cover art. It was interesting, particularly with the technicalities of a power-plant, and well written but it suddenly dawned on me that there were only a few pages to the end and the meltdown hadn’t happened. The novel is 188 pages and meltdown eventually occurs on page 182! It certainly wasn’t the apocalyptic catastrophe novel I was expecting, more a long preamble to a speedily-dealt-with incident. One curious aspect of the novel is that it shows, using diagrams, how to make a shaped-charge and "dry-seed" timing device! Handy, I suppose, for those readers wanting to indulge in a bit of sabotage! New English Library published two similar themed novels, The Explosion by Hans Heinrich Ziemann in 1978 and Dome, Lawrence Huff, in 1980. Perhaps they will come up with the goods.
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