Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 122: Lexa's Lecture

"Finding a nuclear power station," Kane echoes thoughtfully. "That's your suggestion?"

Raven manages a nod, although she still looks faintly queasy and hungover. "Yeah. That's my vote."

"How will that help us?" Lexa asks, frowning slightly.

Raven shrugs. "I told you before that I can't magically make it not a nuke," she says bluntly. "That's still true. So our options are bury it, blow it, or blast it into space."

Lexa tilts her head slightly, curious. "And of these you recommend...?"

"None of them," Raven says flatly. "You said yourself that Diana proved we can't just keep it here long-term. I'm not sure if there's anywhere we can bury it where there's no chance of anyone finding it – and even if we could find somewhere like that, maybe by dropping it into the middle of the ocean, I'd be worried about it leaking radiation into the surrounding area, something we really don't want."

"What about detonating it?" Abby puts in, frowning slightly. Although she is directly across the table from Clarke and Lexa, she avoids both their eyes as she has since she arrived. The chill in the air between mother and daughter is nearly palpable.

"Raven just said we don't want to leak radiation," Clarke reminds her, frowning.

Abby still doesn't meet her daughter's eyes, but says coolly, "Yes, I heard, thank you, but if we did it in the middle of the desert or something -"

"No, Clarke's right, blowing it up has the same problem," Raven says, intervening hurriedly. "I just don't know enough about how much damage it's likely to do, and if something happened like the wind changing while we did it, we could turn this entire place into a nuclear wasteland. Um. Again."

"Space?" Lexa prompts as Raven trails off.

"Blasting it into space would use up a lot of supplies and if something went wrong we could end up scattering nuclear material over a very wide radius."

"So you think there might be something we can use at a nuclear facility?" Clarke says doubtfully. "What? As far as I remember from our classes, even before the bombs fell no one was exactly sure how to deal with radioactive material."

Raven sighs, and suddenly looks older and more tired. "I know. But I'm not a nuclear scientist, guys, I'm a mechanic. This isn't my area and I can't work off what we know right now. I've spoken to the two Mount Weather scientists who survived and they say that they can make devices to find radiation or block it out, but disposing of nuclear waste isn't something they ever tried to do. What I'm saying is – I need guidance. I need more information. I need supplies, proper supplies that are specifically for nuclear material. Maybe even specifically for this kind of nuclear material."

Lexa considers this. "And you might find those at one of these places," she says thoughtfully. "If you give me a description, I suppose I can send out scouts to search -"

"No," Clarke says immediately. "Too risky. I don't think they'll find more nuclear weaponry, since it was all used up when the bombs fell, but if we send people off searching for nuclear power plants or something they could definitely get radiation poisoning."

"That's where I think the Mount Weather guys will be able to help," Raven replies. "No one knows how to detect radiation like they do. If we give them some supplies I think they can build us a few Geiger counters or whatever. They might even be able to make them sensitive enough that we can use them to find the nuclear facilities. And hopefully there they'll have advice on the best ways to dispose of nuclear material – containers that we know won't leak, places where it would be safe to bury it, maybe even some kind of testing area where we could actually blow it up partially without poisoning the whole place."