The military-industrial scientific research system of the academic master.

Chapter 1465 What is the right to speak? (5k words, in )

Two days later, Friday at 4:30 p.m.

The Dutch may not be as lazy at work as the French or Italians, but they are definitely not a nation that loves to work overtime.

Therefore, even though it was still half an hour before the official end of get off work, the administrative building of the Petten High Flux Nuclear Reactor (HFR) was already filled with a relaxed atmosphere of the upcoming weekend, and many people had even begun planning their vacation to the province of IJssel this weekend.

Cody Schneider rubbed his sore eyes, dragged the files on the screen into the folder, and then stretched.

As the chief officer assigned by the Nuclear Regulatory Authority to HFR, he is responsible for reviewing the safety documents of all international cooperation projects, so he has been reviewing a test application from the Chinese research team in the past two days.

As is customary, the review of such cooperative projects under the ITER framework is mostly a formality. After all, most of the key content has been discussed at the previous Karadashe Conference, and only some technical details remain.

All those who can come to HFR for testing are leaders in the nuclear field of their respective countries, and it is basically impossible for them to do anything outrageous.

The only thing to be aware of is the safety aspect.

So, in the entire office, he was the only one who was still working hard.

"Finally... there's only one left."

At this point, Schneider's mind was clearly no longer on work, and the only part left was about the start-up of the reactor.

The HFR main reactor has just undergone a round of large-scale refurbishment, and the Chinese delegation happened to be ranked first in this round of testing, so it has one more step than all other countries.

But this is just a small reactor used for research after all, and starting the core is not a big deal.

So he decided to take a quick look and then join in the discussion with his colleagues.

However, just as he was rapidly scrolling the mouse wheel, his peripheral vision suddenly caught a glimpse of an abnormality in a data table on the screen.

He frowned and turned back the page he had already slid to.

"Strange..." he muttered to himself, his fingers tapping rapidly on the keyboard, calling up the checklist for the Monte Carlo simulation program.

Behind the columns for "Primary Neutron Source" and "Secondary Neutron Source", the parameter values ​​that should have been there were actually blank.

"Hell..."

Schneider thought there was some mistake in his previous work, so he quickly found the security solution document submitted by the Chinese team and used the search function to find related entries on "neutron source".

The only thing I found was a vague statement: "Neutron injection configuration will adopt a non-traditional solution. For specific parameters, see Technical Annex F7" -

However, there is no so-called Technical Annex F7 in the entire document.

This kind of problem is not uncommon in their work. The audit documents submitted by various countries all delete some sensitive content from their own versions, and such a large amount of text operations will inevitably leave some small tails, so it is often the case that attachments or charts cannot be found, and no one will care too much about it.

But this time it was different.

Because this Annex F7 is really about safety.

“Hans!” Schneider suddenly called out, his voice standing out in the open office. “Come and look at this!”

Hans van der Veer, a nuclear safety engineer at HFR, was packing his backpack to leave work early to pick up his daughter. He sighed and shuffled over: "What's the matter, Schneider? Can't we wait until next Monday?"

"No." Schneider's voice was unusually serious. "The Chinese people's safety plan does not include a neutron source."

Vanderville's expression froze instantly, and he slowly put down his backpack with reluctance.

"you sure?"

He leaned closer to the screen.

"I checked three times. They mentioned a neutron source but didn't give any specific parameters or location information."

Several other people in the office heard the conversation and gathered around, destroying the relaxed atmosphere of the Friday afternoon.

"That's impossible." Reactor physicist Marika de Jong pushed up her glasses. "How do they start the reaction without a neutron source? How do they plan to control the initial reaction rate?"

"Look here..." Van der Weil pointed at the results that Schneider had just found, and his voice suddenly became low. "They plan to use some kind of technology that we are not familiar with."

A silence fell over the small group, everyone understanding the possibility he was hinting at—

The Chinese may have developed a completely new reactor startup technology, but the lack of details suggests that there may be military applications behind it.

"Notify Ms. Shulting immediately," Schneider stood up, his face serious, "We can't make the decision on this matter."

The door to Yulia Shulting's office was closed, but a light could be seen through the frosted glass.

Schneider knocked on the door and heard a tired "Come in".

The head of HFR was sorting his briefcase. Seeing the serious expressions of the four people, he raised his eyebrows in surprise: "What happened?"

Shulting has been in this position for two years. In her impression, these old men are not the ones who are active in their work.

Coming to see me before getting off work on Friday means it’s not a small matter.

"The Huaxia team's safety plan has problems," Schneider said bluntly. "They did not set up the neutron source according to ITER standards."

Yulia stopped moving in mid-air, her eyes flashing with alertness: "Tell me in detail."

De Jong took over the conversation: "We checked the input files of the Monte Carlo simulation and found that all the parameters of the primary and secondary neutron sources were missing. The safety plan only mentioned that 'unconventional methods' would be used, but there was no specific explanation."

"They only submitted safety documents, not a complete test plan," Van der Veer added, "so we don't know what they are going to do for now."

Shulting sat down slowly: "It seems that the Chinese should not make such a low-level mistake..."

"Unless this is not a mistake," Schneider lowered his voice, "but it was intentional..."

"Don't jump to conclusions," Yulia interrupted him, "We have been working with Academician Peng's team for many years, and they have always been very professional."

She looked at her watch. "But the security risk cannot be ignored. I will contact them..."

She picked up the red phone on the desk and dialed the internal line.

During the ten or so seconds of waiting for the call to be connected, the office was so quiet that I could hear the ticking of the electronic clock.

“Academician Peng, I’m Yulia Shulting,” she said in English with a slight Dutch accent. “I’m sorry to bother you so late, but we found some problems…”

The video call was quickly established.

On the other side of the screen, Academician Peng Juexian was sitting in a slightly messy laboratory. Judging from the layout on the wall, it should be the characterization laboratory provided by HFR.

Obviously, the other party is still making final preparations before the test.

"Ms. Shulting," he responded in perfect English, his voice steady, "I assume it's about the security plan?"

Shulting was slightly surprised:
"You expected us to contact you?"

Peng Juexian took off his rubber gloves and shook his head: "That's not the case, but you guys are having a video conference call with me at this time when get off work is almost over, I'm afraid there is no other possibility..."

"Yes." Shulting nodded. "I should have given you an answer before tomorrow, but now I have encountered some problems..." Hearing this, Peng Juexian's eyes showed a little surprise.

In fact, although the other party had promised to give a reply within three days, he always thought that the "three days" referred to three working days.

I didn’t expect it to really be three days.

Before, I had only heard from Fang Jianming that Hua Xia’s treatment by the Dutch had improved, but it was not until now that I experienced it firsthand.

"Academician Peng," Shulting went straight to the point, "In the safety plan you provided, the specific location of the neutron source and the source intensity parameters were not specified, so we cannot assess the risks during the reactor startup phase..."

Peng Juexian nodded slightly, and replied in a calm but firm tone:
“Our team discussed whether we should provide more details in the safety documents. However, considering the technical sensitivity and the requirements of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, we finally decided to submit only the minimum necessary information, which is also in line with the relevant principles and specifications of ITER…”

Shulting took a deep breath and quickly raised his hand to stop the other party from continuing to escalate the issue.

There are indeed some stubborn countries in the world that can ignore the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

But the Netherlands is definitely not among them.

"We certainly support the ITER regulations and the principles of relevant international treaties..."

She first expressed her opinion, and then changed the subject:
“Although the scale of HFR is not large, in extreme cases, an improperly designed neutron source may still cause the source range detection instrument to fail, causing the core to enter a prompt supercritical state. This is also a problem we must pay attention to…”

"I understand your concerns," Peng Juexian interrupted her, his tone still calm, "but please rest assured that our plan fundamentally avoids this risk. It is even safer than the external neutron source plan currently calculated based on the Monte Carlo program... In fact, we will not use the traditional californium neutron source rod at all."

This sentence exploded like a bomb in the Dutch team.

The other four people who were sitting outside the camera's range couldn't help but whisper to each other.

Marika de Jong couldn't help but blurt out: "Then how do you provide the initial neutron flux?"

"This is the core technical detail. Unfortunately, I cannot disclose it here." Peng Juexian was stunned for a moment, then realized that there must be other people outside the screen, and quickly restored his polite smile. "But I can assure you that our method completely avoids the possibility of instantaneous supercriticality... and from a professional perspective, you can also judge this for yourself."

Shulting exchanged a worried look with her colleagues. She turned to the screen and said, "Academician Peng, I respect your need for technical confidentiality. But as the head of HFR, I cannot allow operations on the reactor that cannot assess the risks. Unless..."

“Unless we provide more technical details, we will enter a dead end.” Peng Juexian took over the conversation and sighed, “Besides the concerns about weaponized applications, our patent application for ITER is still under review. If we reveal the core technology now, it may affect the protection of intellectual property rights.”

There was silence on both ends of the video.

In the end, Shulting chose to take a step back and said, "If you want to make a decision by tomorrow morning, you need to at least provide some theoretical basis to convince us that this... unconventional method is safe?"

Peng Juexian pondered for a moment, obviously evaluating which parts could be revealed.

After a few seconds, he suddenly asked: "Are you familiar with the concept of 'endogenous neutron source'?"

Shulting frowned: "You mean to use the properties of the core material itself to produce neutrons? But this requires a specific combination of nuclides..."

"That's all I can say," Peng Juexian raised his hand to signal a stop, "Please understand, this is the limit."

After the call, a heated debate broke out in HFR's conference room.

"This is too risky!" De Jong knocked on the table. "Without the neutron source parameters, we can't even do a basic Monte Carlo simulation!"

"But they said they would not use traditional neutron sources," Van der Veer thought. "If it is true as Academician Peng said, that prompt supercriticality is completely avoided, then this may be some kind of new technology, which may have great value for the use of nuclear energy... or at least be an inspiration, and this is exactly the significance of our HFR construction."

It must be acknowledged that although ITER as a whole is a platform for countries to distribute interests, there are still many members who truly pursue idealism.

Especially in the 90s, until the beginning of the 21st century,

Britain, France and Germany have all reconciled, so what else is impossible?
Schneider sneered: "The Chinese always like to play word games. What do you mean by 'not able to use traditional neutron sources'? Did they invent a perpetual motion machine?"

"That's enough." Shulting stopped the argument. "We need to rationally evaluate what will happen in the worst case scenario if the internal neutron source is not activated?"

Van der Wiel almost thought: "The reactor may not reach criticality and fail to start, but it will not cause substantial damage to the core facilities."

As the controller of HFR, although they cannot know China's entire testing plan, they can still fully control things like using neutron source rods.

"What about the economic benefits?" De Jong asked again.

"If any participant suffers losses due to test failure, compensation can be directly deducted from the technical deposit paid by their own team to ITER... Specifically for China, the upper limit is about 15 million euros."

The finance officer responded quickly:
"Of course, if the loss exceeds this amount, further compensation can be sought later."

Shulting nodded: "So the risk is controllable. The real danger only exists in the improper design of the neutron source leading to supercriticality, and Academician Peng clearly stated that they will not use traditional neutron sources..."

"You believe him?" De Jong asked in disbelief.

Shulting looked at the dusk outside the window and said slowly: "This is not a question of trust, Marika...but a judgment based on the breakthroughs China has made in the field of nuclear technology in recent years."

There are not many publications on the Chinese side, but last year ITER chose them as a partner for the WEST upgrade mission almost without any warning. I think this was definitely not a whim of someone.

Vanderwell's eyes lit up: "You mean... they might have really developed some revolutionary technology?"

"In any case," Shulting did not answer directly, but stated, "As long as HFR itself is not at risk, I think they should be given this opportunity. After all, frontier exploration is always accompanied by uncertainty."

"I object." De Jong insisted, "This is not just a technical issue. If China can use this excuse to bypass security checks, then if other countries follow suit, how should we deal with it? Besides, the WEST upgrade is essentially an independent project belonging to France. Who knows if there is anyone behind it..."

“Marika,” Yulia interrupted him, “All cooperative projects under the ITER framework are subject to strict political review. If their government has reached an agreement with the Chinese government, it is not our concern.”

Ultimately, the technical committee decided to hold an informal vote.

Of the fifteen members, eight voted in favor and seven voted against. The Huaxia team's test application was approved with the smallest margin.

After the meeting, De Jong packed up the documents with a gloomy face, obviously not really convinced.

Schneider came over and patted her on the shoulder: "Don't worry too much, Marika... If the Chinese really mess up, at least we can watch a good show."

The latter shook his head. "I'm not worried about them failing, Cody. I'm worried about them succeeding in ways we can't understand."

At the same time, inside the testing center a few kilometers away.

Peng Juexian closed the video link and turned to his team: "The Dutch have discovered it. I mean the neutron source in the core."

Huang Zhitao, who just came to submit a report, was a little nervous when he heard this: "Will they reject our application?"

Peng Juexian took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. "That shouldn't be the case. Ms. Shulting is a pragmatic person. As long as it doesn't threaten her reactor, she should be willing to take the risk."

"But if they find out during testing that we're using external radiation..."

"No," Peng Juexian said confidently, "The signal characteristics of stimulated endogenous neutron sources are completely different from those of traditional neutron sources. External instruments can only detect some weak radioactive signals at most, and they will not exceed the safety threshold."

He stood up and stretched his aching body:

"What we need to do now is to use these few days to confirm the testing process with Academician Chang again."

"If I fail, I can't blame others for making fun of me..."

(End of this chapter)