Fukushima and CHASING THE FOURTH HORSE

On March 11, 2011, a powerful earthquake followed by an enormous tsunami struck Fukushima, Japan, devastating the local six-reactor nuclear power facility. The world is riveted by the life-and-death drama that continues today. At the heart of this facility are deep pools of water that cover the on-site storage of spent fuel. This coverage was lost when the pools overheated and the water boiled off. Workers lost control over the crucial cooling functions and the resultant fire, explosions, and radiation release alarms the world.

Terrorists are among those watching the devastation. This new insight must surely feed their appetite.

The result is the United States must re-examine the security of 104 nuclear power facilities. There are new interests and doubts about the usefulness of nuclear power generation as an ecologically friendly source of energy. New scrutiny awaits the on-site storage of spent fuel at the reactor, especially those power plants that have had to rearrange pool storage to cram in more spent fuel.

Long before March 11th, the predicted date that on-site storage would reach capacity in the U.S. was 2015. The Federal Government, therefore, contracted with the utilities to receive their spent fuel starting in 1998. The Feds are in default because they have not yet opened the proposed national high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The utilities are now facing increased risks, including risks from terrorists.

CHASING THE FOURTH HORSE, written and published long before March 11, foresaw the pressure mounting from the limited on-site spent fuel storage. In this novel, the government manipulates relief by shipping spent fuel to Mount Bleak under the guise of research. By 2035, terrorists see the large concentration of spent fuel at Mount Bleak as a target of opportunity.

A Moslem terrorist cell in San Diego and a discredited physics professor perfect a diabolical scheme to discredit the use of nuclear energy through national nuclear terrorism. Only a Hispanic undercover CIA operative and a female terrorism agent can stop them.

Drumming hoof beats become the backdrop to fire bombing, shipwreck, kidnap, torture, and the threat of widespread nuclear disaster when terrorists steal a pale wild horse from Professor Lee Cantrell. But the imagery goes far beyond the present. Borrowing from the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation, Chasing the Fourth Horse utilizes the imagery of the pale horse to represent the imminent possibility of worldwide nuclear disaster—the powerful beat behind every scene of this thriller set in 2035.

This piece of fiction is sprinkled with truths; therefore, the author provides back matter captioned "Behind the Scenes." Here fact is separated from fiction and the reader is provided with information about technologies of the future, Christian theology, Arabic customs, Muslim belief and practice, nuclear waste dangers, and the Yucca Mountain Repository.

Some of the dangers of nuclear waste, exploited in the story, are now dramatized by the Fukushima disaster. Spent fuel storage was the source of great disaster at Fukushima; spent fuel storage is the stuff for terrorists in the thriller, CHASING THE FOURTH HORSE, ESSENCE PUBLISHING.

Amazon/Kindle published a Second Edition of this book. In it I have a new twist to the ending.

This is an example of Christian Fiction based upon current issues.

Dennis Price