"Will the one device be enough?" Sakai asked.  "To clean up the crater, I mean."

The woman's attention was fixed on Siegfried's progress.  In a distracted tone she said, "Mr. Sakai, putting a chain across the access road would be enough to clean up this site.  The crater walls would shield anyone working nearby from the gamma radiation, and it would take no effort at all to reroute hopper overflights so their passengers would not be exposed.  Most of the biological danger of a reactor meltdown comes from alpha radiation emitted by particulate radioisotopes in the air or water.  When concentrated in the body, alpha-emitters can do considerable damage; elsewhere, no.  Alpha particles can be stopped by a sheet of paper.  So long as you keep a reactor out of your ecosystem, it's as safe as any other large machine.  Burying a destroyed reactor just because it is radioactive is unnecessary and, if you will forgive me for saying so, superstitious.  But I don't make policy.  I just blow things up."

"Is this the shaft you're looking for?" Gunther asked.

"Yes.  Walk it down to the bottom.  It's not far."

Gunther switched on Siegfried's chestlight, and sank a roller relay so the cable wouldn't snag.  They went down.  Finally Izmailova said, "Stop.  That's far enough."  He gently set the device down and then, at her direction, flicked the arming toggle.  "That's done," Izmailova said.  "Bring your unit back.  I've given you an hour to put some distance between the crater and yourself."  Gunther noticed that the remotes, on automatic, had already begun walking away.

"Um ... I've still got fuel rods to load."

"Not today you don't.  The new reactor has been taken back apart and hauled out of the blasting zone."

Gunther thought now of all the machinery being disassembled and removed from the industrial park, and was struck for the first time by the operation's sheer extravagance of scale.  Normally only the most sensitive devices were removed from a blasting area.  "Wait a minute.  Just what kind  of monster explosive are you planning to use?"