Sahara (Dirk Pitt 11)

"What you see is an exact representation," Massarde assured him.

"And you're about to give us a no-frills, fact-filled lecture on its operation."

"A lecture you can take with you to the grave," Massarde said reproachfully. He picked up a long ivory pointer and aimed its tip at a large field on the south side of the project covered with huge flat modules slanted toward the sun. "We are completely energy sufficient," Massarde began. "We produce our own electricity with this photovoltaic grid system of flat-plate solar cell modules made from polycrystalline silicon that covers 4 square kilometers. Are yon: familiar with photovoltaics?"

"I know that it's rapidly becoming the world's most economical energy source," answered Pitt. "As I understand it, photovoltaics is a solar technology that converts the sun's power into direct current electrical energy."

"Quite right," said Massarde. "When sunlight, or what scientists refer to as solar photon energy, strikes the surface of these cells after its 115-million-kilometer journey from the sun, a flow of electricity is produced, enough to operate a project three times this size should we wish to expand." He paused and aimed the pointer at a structure near the array of modules. "This building houses the generators powered by the energy converted from the modular field and the battery subsystem where the energy is stored for nighttime use or for days when the sun does not shine, which is a rarity in this part of the Sahara."

"Efficient," said Pitt. "An efficient power system. But your array of solar concentrators, they do not operate with the same degree of effectiveness?"

Massarde looked thoughtfully at Pitt. He wondered why this man always seemed a step ahead of him. He swung the pointer toward a field next to the solar cells that held the array of parabolic trough collectors Pitt had observed the day before.

"They do," he replied icily. "My solar thermal technology for the destruction of hazardous wastes is the most advanced program of any industrial nation. This field of superconcentrators delivers solar concentrations higher than the normal light of eighty thousand suns. This high intensity sunlight, or photon energy, is then focused into the first of two quartz reactors." Massarde paused to touch the pointer against a miniature building. "The first breaks the toxic waste down into harmless chemicals at a temperature of 950 degrees Celsius. The second reactor, at temperatures around 1200 degrees Celsius, incinerates any remaining infinitesimal residue. The destruction of every known manmade toxic chemical is total and complete."

Pitt looked at Massarde with respect mixed with doubt. "This all sounds very thorough and final. But if your detoxification operation is a state-of-the-art wonder of utility, why are you hiding millions of tons of waste underground?"

"Very few people are aware of the staggering number of chemicals that are spread around the globe. There are over seven million known man-made chemical compounds. And each week chemists create ten thousand new ones. At current rates, over two billion tons of waste are accumulating around the world every year. Three hundred million alone in the United States. Twice that in Europe and Russia More than double that amount when you throw in South America, Africa, Japan, and China. Some is burned by incinerators; most is illegally dumped in landfills or discharged in water supplies. There is no place for it to go. Here in the Sahara, far from the crowded cities and farmlands, I have provided a safe place for international industries to send their toxic waste. At the moment Fort Foureau can destroy over four hundred million tons of hazardous waste a year. But I cannot destroy it all, not until my solar thermal detoxification projects in the Gobi Desert and Australia are completed to handle waste from China and nations of the Far East. For your interest, I also have a facility only two weeks away from start-up in the United States."

"Very commendable, but that doesn't excuse you from burying what you can't destroy and charging for it."

Massarde nodded. "Cost efficiency, Mr. Pitt. It's cheaper to hide toxic waste than destroy it."

"And you follow the same line of logic for nuclear waste," said Pitt accusingly.

"Waste is waste. As far as humans are concerned, the only basic difference between nuclear and toxic is that one kills with radioactivity and the other with poison."

"Dump and forget it, and to hell with the consequences."

Massarde gave an indifferent shrug. "It has to go somewhere. My country has the largest nuclear energy program in the world second only to the United States in number of reactors in operation to generate electricity. Two radioactive waste repositories are already in operation. One at Soulaines, the other at La Manche. Unfortunately, neither, was designed to dispose of long-life or high-level nuclear waste. Plutonium 239, for example, has a half-life of twenty-four thousand years. There are other radioactive nuclides that have half-lives a hundred times longer. No containment system will last more than ten or twenty years. As you have discov

ered on your uninvited expedition into our storage cavern, we receive and dispose of the high-level waste here."

"Then despite your holier-than-thou speech on hazardous waste management, your solar detoxification project is a front."

Massarde smiled thinly. "In a sense, yes. But as I've explained, we actually destroy a high amount of waste."

"Mostly for appearance's sake," Pitt said, his voice cold and compelling. "I give you credit, Massarde, building this phony project without international intelligence agencies getting wind of it. How did you fool spy satellites while you excavated your storage caverns?"

"Nothing really," Massarde said arrogantly. "After I built the railroad to bring in construction workers and materials, the excavation began under the first building erected. The soil was secretly removed and loaded in the empty railroad containers returning to Mauritania and used for a landfill in the nation's port city, a profitable ongoing project I might add."

"Very shrewd. You get paid for the waste coming in and for the sand and rock going out."

"I never stop at seeking merely one advantage," Massarde said philosophically.

"No one is the wiser, and no one complains," said Pitt. "No environmental protection agencies threatening to close you down, no international uproar over polluting underground water systems. No one questions your methods of operation, particularly the corporations that produce the waste, and who are only too glad to get rid of it for a price."

Verenne's expressionless gaze rested on Pitt. "There are few saints who practice what they preach when it comes to saving the environment," he said coldly. "Everyone is guilty, Mr. Pitt. Everyone who enjoys the benefits of chemical compounds from gasoline to plastics to water purification and food preservatives. It is a case of the jury secretly agreeing with the guilty. No one man or organization can control and destroy the monster. It is a self-propagating Frankenstein that is too late to kill."

"So you make it worse by feeding on it in the name of profit. Instead of a solution, you've created a hoax."

"Hoax?"

"Yes, by reneging on the expense of building long-lasting waste canisters and excavating deep deposit chambers several kilometers underground, in geologically stable rock formations far beneath existing water tables." Pitt turned from Verenne to Massarde. "You're nothing more than a shyster contractor who charges exorbitant prices for inferior construction that endangers lives."

Massarde's face went red, but he was a master at controlling anger. "The threat of waste leakage fifty or a hundred years from now killing off a few sand beggars matters little."

"That's easy for you to say," said Pitt, his face hardened in scorn. "But the leakage is occurring today, and desert nomads are dying as we talk. And lest we forget that, what you've caused here could affect every living life form on earth."