Unusual Event

Some threats come from outside. Some from within. At a nuclear plant, both can be catastrophic. On an ordinary night at Pelican Point Nuclear Generating Station, eight armed men breech the fence, and are inside the control room in under ten minutes. They do not want a meltdown. They want time, and they want quiet. The official emergency is declared at the lowest level on the federal ladder, an Unusual Event, and it never changes. The sirens stay off. The response stays small. The people who could help are never told they are needed. Inside the fence, a handful of people who were never supposed to matter must work the problem with the only tools they have left: a plant they understand better than the men who took it. Dave Reynolds is a senior operator one year from retirement. Sara Patel is an Army veteran turned security officer who has only months on the job. Along with an aging security veteran and an instrument technician, they have until sunrise. By morning the attackers are gone and the plant is still standing. But they crossed a harbor for a hundred and twenty tons of spent fuel and left it lying in a ditch. So what were they really after? Written by a former nuclear plant operator and emergency manager, Unusual Event is a nuclear thriller built on the real procedures, pressures, and people running the machine around the clock.