The six new Doernberg-Giardano breeder-reactors clustered in a circle
inside a windowless concrete building at the center of the plant. Beside
their primary purpose of plutonium production, they furnished heat for
the sea-water distillation and chemical extraction system, processing
the water that was run through the steam boilers at the main power
reactors, condensed, redistilled, and finally pumped, pure, into the
water mains of New York. Safe outside the shielding, in a corner of a
high-ceilinged room, was the plyboard-screened on-the-job office of the
Melroy Engineering Corporation's timekeepers and foremen. Beyond, along
the far wall, were the washroom and locker room and lunch room of the
workmen.
Sixty or seventy men, mostly in white coveralls and all wearing
identification badges and carrying dosimeters in their breast pockets
and midget Geigers strapped to their wrists, were crowded about the
bulletin-board in front of the makeshift office. There was a hum of
voices--some perplexed or angry, but mostly good-humored and bantering.
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