Free Cold is the Sea by Edward L. Beach

could not be repaired without completely shutting down and draining it. Since it was a small subsidiary line, there might be some other way.
    He seized his dosimeter, held it in his hand while still looking through the periscope, straightened up quickly to peer through it: good! It had mounted only about a quarter of the way up its scale.
    Back to the periscope, twisting it slightly, focusing as carefully as he could set the eyepiece, following the faulty line as far as the instrument would let him see. At one point he crossed over again to the other periscope, identified the line he was inspecting, following it further. There was indeed a way!
    â€œRed,” said Rich, once again back in the engineroom, “it’s a very small leak, a pinhole, and we can fix it.”
    â€œHow? How are we going to fix it without shutting down?”
    â€œWe’ll have to shut down, but not for long, and we can make a hot start. So we’ll not lose the test. The leak is in the demineralizer bypass, We’ll put a freeze on both sides of the leak, cut out the faulty piece of pipe, and cap both parts of the line. It’ll be out of commission, but we don’t need that bypass line much anyway. How many stainless-steel welders are on tonight with you?”
    â€œThree, I think. Maybe now there’s a couple more qualified.”
    â€œOkay, here’s what we do. As soon as the radiation in the lower level gets down to ambient we can go in there. Once the reactor is shut down we’ll have an hour or so to wait, and we’ll need that to get organized. By the time Dusty gets here we’ll be all ready to go, and if he okays it we’ll have her back on the line in a couple of hours. We can keep the pressurizer hot and keep the bubble in it. It’ll be hot working alongside it, but nobody will be in there more than about three minutes, and nobody will receive more than the allowable week’s radiation. The main thing to be really careful of is to stay out of the path of the leak. That’s hot in more ways than only one!”
    Rich spoke swiftly and, as before, in a low tone. He could see Baker’s discouragement vanishing, his confidence and enthusiasm mounting. A period of hyperactivity came over the crew of Mark One. The entire group was assembled for a briefing on the procedure to be followed, and each individual’s part in it was assigned. A plan of the compartment, showing the line to be cut, was procured and posted. Each of the men designated to enter the lower level studied not only his own operation but those of the persons preceding and following him as well. Liquid nitrogen bottles were made ready. Molds were prepared to hold the frigid liquid around the faulty pipe at the selected points. Tools, clean coveralls, shoe covers, gloves and masks were taken from storerooms and laid out. Supplies of salt tablets were procured, to be swallowed in advance by those designated to enter the lower reactor compartment.
    When Rhodes arrived at the site, after a high-speed dash over the lonely highway from Idaho Falls, he required only a briefing prior to putting through the obligatory telephone call to Admiral Brighting in Washingon.
    Richardson, following a brief but detailed conversation with an anxious Dusty Rhodes, was first in the lower level, his job to mark the point of the leak he had spotted and the locations of the two freeze points. Maximum ventilation had been on for some time, exhausting the hot, confined air of the lower reactor compartment. Cool air, streaming through the hatch in the insulated deck separating the two levels, flapped the legs of his heavy white canvas coveralls as he descended the hot steel ladder, but, once inside, the heat of the steel surrounding him penetrated swiftly through his baggy coveralls and through his shoes, gloves, cloth helmet—actually a hood covering his entire head—and his face mask. He had been prepared for it, knew what to expect,