Eila noticed Leonid’s arm was raised once more.

“Yes Leonid?”

“So it is because of the landslide that we can’t use nuclear power anymore?”

Eila smiled at this boy who was so determined to get the final answer to his question.

“There were a number of factors, Leonid, but yes, that is correct. The landslide was the event that finally made the Global Council ban nuclear energy. So that is why I am here and that is why this facility is being decommissioned.”

As the weeks passed Eila told this story, with minor variations, over and over. One month after she started working at Lemoniz she was delighted to recognize a familiar face at the front of her tour group.

“Hello Mareja” she said in Norwegian. “Is this your mother with you?” Mareja nodded and her mother introduced herself.

“After the tour I’ll take you both to a few places that most people don't get to see”.

An hour later they were carefully making their way along catwalks inside the nuclear plant itself. It was not such a big space; perhaps 60 m square and filled with large stainless steel tanks and pipes.

“This is not the reactor” said Eila. “No visitors are allowed in that building. This is the generator building where steam heated by the nuclear reaction turns these giant turbines.”

Mareja’s mother seemed very impressed.

“It is amazing that this plant can power more than 1 million homes, Eila. If only someone could find a safe way to deal with the radioactive waste we could have stayed in Oslo.” She was obviously sad and yet seemed resigned to the situation.

“Yes, it is a shame. And the worst thing of all is that the radioactive waste that we have produced over the past 80 years will still be here and will be dangerous for thousands of years. I’ll take you out to the storage area so that you can see how big the problem is.”

Eila led them out of the generator building to another building about 30 m away. Inside they donned hazmat suits after which Eila took them to the spent fuel rod viewing area.

“Only a small volume of material in the uranium fuel rods is actually destroyed by the nuclear reaction” Eila explained.

“Most of the material is transformed into highly radioactive by-products like plutonium. This material has to be stored in water tanks because it continues to generate a lot of heat as it breaks down into other fission products. Every nuclear plant in the world has a tank like this filled with hundreds of kilograms of highly radioactive material.”

As they left the waste storage facility and walked towards the entrance gate of the facility they passed a bank of large transformers. The loud humming reminded Mareja of the sound that she had heard the day she saw the coil gun in action.

“Ms. Ojanen! How big a coil gun could you make if you used all the electricity produced at this plant?”

“Oh Mareja, you could make a very big coil gun.”

“One big enough to send a man to the moon?” Her young voice was full of expectation.

“A man? Yes probably, Mareja. A woman would be too smart to go, don’t you think?”

Mareja and her mother laughed. Eila closed her eyes and imagined a large coil gun buried vertically in the ground, shooting a spacecraft into the sky. Suddenly she turned to Mareja.

“Mareja, you’ve given me an idea. Quite an interesting idea, I think. After I take you back to the tour guide area I need to speak to my supervisor.”

A few minutes later she was knocking on the door of Phillippe Rodriguez, the plant manager. It was almost quitting time and he resented the interruption so late in the day.

“Come in. Sit down, Ms. …” he looked at Eila’s security badge. “ … Ms. Ojanen … please excuse me if I did not pronounce your name correctly. What can I do for you?”

Eila took a deep breath, then said in a very calm voice “Senior Rodriguez – I may know how to get rid of all of your radioactive waste.”