I II III IV V VI VII

MELTDOWN

.QUEST

A SCROLLING DOCUMENTARY

NORMAL OPERATIONS

REACTOR VESSEL — CROSS SECTION

The facility operated at nominal capacity for eleven years. Cooling systems circulated 48,000 gallons per minute through the primary loop. Control rods maintained criticality within 0.003% tolerance. Every reading, every gauge, every instrument confirmed a single truth: the system was performing exactly as designed.

CORE TEMP: 287.3°C  |  PRESSURE: 155.1 BAR  |  NEUTRON FLUX: NOMINAL

FIRST WARNING

!! COOLANT FLOW ANOMALY DETECTED !!

At 01:23:44, the primary coolant pump registered a 12% flow reduction. The control room dismissed it as sensor drift — a known calibration issue documented in three previous quarterly reports. The backup pump engaged automatically. For forty-seven seconds, everything appeared to correct itself.

RADIATION LEVEL 0.003 mSv/h

ESCALATION

The backup pump failed at 01:24:31. Core temperature rose 4 degrees in twelve seconds. The emergency shutdown sequence — SCRAM — was initiated automatically. Three of the five control rod clusters descended normally. Two did not.

The operators had seventeen minutes. They did not know this yet.

RADIATION LEVEL 0.847 mSv/h

AFTERMATH

The containment vessel was breached at 01:41:09.

Radioactive material dispersed across 4,200 square kilometers.

Evacuation order issued: 134,000 residents.

RADIATION LEVEL 347.2 mSv/h

EXCLUSION ZONE

The zone remains uninhabitable.

Concrete sarcophagus: estimated lifespan 100 years.

Plutonium-239 half-life: 24,100 years.

Nature reclaims what humans abandoned.

AMBIENT READING 12.8 mSv/h

The reactors are quiet now.