The Prometheus Project
The Prometheus Project. In 2005, Yoo Jae-won's momentum after acquiring the 116-year-old Westinghouse and rebranding it as ID Westinghouse was unstoppable. What moved even faster were the patent applications filed across the United States, Europe, and multiple Asian countries to certify the safety and superiority of the thorium reactor. A patent meant disclosing the core principles of a previously nonexistent technology in exchange for a time-limited exclusive right to use it. Because the technology became public, there was always the risk of me-too products flooding the market. As a result, some companies that trusted their own capabilities deliberately avoided filing patents for new technologies. They calculated that revealing something so distinctly superior would be more dangerous than keeping it hidden. In the case of the thorium reactor, however, anyone who understood its structure could replicate it. Patent registration was therefore the only correct choice.
Yet Yoo Jae-won, who always stayed one step ahead, went further and prepared academic papers as well. He had tasted the dangers of corporate technological monopolies plenty of times in his previous life. Besides, the thorium reactor patents would expire in 2020—more than enough time to prepare for nuclear fusion, the ultimate flame humanity could ever hope to master.
The fact that thorium reactors were incomparably safer than conventional nuclear reactors had already been proven. Yet in the nuclear power plant market, nothing mattered more than track record. Everyone knew that when accidents happened, they were catastrophic. Chernobyl, the eternal cautionary tale of nuclear disasters, had been hellish beyond description. Therefore, countries considering nuclear plants cared first about safety, and that safety was often measured by construction performance. How many units of a particular model had been built became the clearest indicator of reliability.
This was the thorium reactor’s weakest point. Its design was completely different from every previous nuclear model. Its only operational example was the experimental reactor in Waterville. Everyone acknowledged that thorium reactors were safe, but no country was willing to switch the model of a planned power plant to thorium. The best they could do was submit proposals whenever a completely new plant was announced.
Waiting passively for years was never Yoo Jae-won’s style. Moreover, realizing his vision for a new East Asian order required the relentless drive of a bulldozer.
No track record? Then ID Westinghouse would create the greatest showcase on Earth by building a massive thorium reactor at the corporate level. The location was the Mojave Desert northeast of Los Angeles, California. The plant would be operated jointly with the U.S. Department of Energy, which oversaw nuclear energy policy. Conventional nuclear plants required enormous amounts of cooling water and were therefore usually built along coastlines. Thorium reactors, however, were free from that constraint and could be safely placed in the desert.
Any interested nations could observe the Mojave thorium reactor from the earliest stages of construction and personally verify the stability of its design. And Yoo Jae-won’s measures did not stop there.
A sales method that had never existed in the nuclear industry before. Order one thorium reactor and receive another power plant of equal capacity at no additional cost. It was the kind of marketing one would expect from a big-box discount store. There was an old Korean saying: “If it’s free, even lye tastes sweet.” It meant people would swallow anything if it cost them nothing. Of course, a thorium reactor was hardly lye. Still, a dramatic gesture was necessary to dispel the lingering skepticism of nuclear professionals. Thus, the 1+1 promotion was born.
Nuclear power plants were not small investments. No company had ever dared offer such aggressive incentives. Only ID Westinghouse could afford to do so. The secret behind it was simple. While Yoo Jae-won’s decisive leadership was the driving force, what enabled his bold move was the fact that thorium reactor construction costs were only half those of conventional plants.
A moment’s thought revealed why this was perfectly logical. The largest expense in nuclear construction was the reactor itself. Because any radiation leak would be catastrophic, the reactor had to be protected by incredibly thick concrete walls capable of withstanding not only earthquakes and other natural disasters but also bombings or terrorist attacks. Some plants, like the one Tokyo Electric Power built in Fukushima, used little more than flimsy slate roofs to keep out the rain. Even then, the reactor cores themselves were extremely complex due to multiple layers of safety shielding. All of it cost money.
In contrast, the thorium reactor designed by Director Clark’s team was remarkably simple. To put it bluntly, it resembled a briquette boiler. The 2-gigawatt Mojave plant was essentially two hundred giant briquettes stacked together. The finished thorium fuel rods even looked similar to traditional cylindrical coal briquettes—only much longer. Once these rods were inserted with ultra-uranium seed rods and controlled to emit neutrons, power generation would begin.
Because the reactor could be built far more cheaply than conventional designs, the budget savings were enormous. The part that converted the generated heat into electricity remained similar, so savings there were limited. But beyond cost reduction, Yoo Jae-won had another plan to minimize losses: the sale of thorium fuel rods themselves.
The lifespan of the thorium fuel rods designed by Director Clark was three months—short, but a necessary choice for stable output. The core principle of thorium power was thorium’s ability to absorb neutrons and transform into uranium. That uranium came in several isotopes. The best was uranium-235, which produced energy through nuclear fission. Uranium-234, however, was non-fissile and useless for power generation. Continued operation inevitably led to the accumulation of non-fissile uranium-234, reducing efficiency.
After lengthy experiments, Director Clark had set the optimal cycle at one hundred days. After one hundred days, the fuel rods had to be replaced. Fuel rod replacement was naturally designated as ID Westinghouse’s exclusive business. Although the rods looked like elongated coal briquettes, they contained advanced technology from ID High-Tech. Thorium itself was abundant and cheap in India and China, so the rods could not be sold at a premium. Even so, a power plant that loaded two hundred rods at a time would generate two million dollars in revenue per replacement cycle at ten thousand dollars per rod.
Even if the replacement cycle was shorter and the price slightly higher than conventional fuel, thorium reactors held overwhelming advantages in power output capacity and spent fuel handling. That was why Yoo Jae-won could confidently launch the 1+1 promotion. The effect was immediate.
The man shaking hands with Yoo Jae-won was Choi Kwang-geon, who carried the lengthy title of Director of the Ministry of Power Industry of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. In American terms, he was equivalent to the Secretary of Energy; in South Korean terms, he oversaw something close to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.
Choi Kwang-geon perfectly fit the stereotypical image of a North Korean official. He had prominent cheekbones, a strongly developed jaw, and broad, powerful shoulders. He looked more like he belonged in a wrestling federation than in a power ministry. What was more interesting was the reaction of the reporters frantically photographing the handshake. Their expressions showed far more fascination than shock.
A high-ranking North Korean official entering the United States to meet Yoo Jae-won would have been unimaginable in the past. But times had changed. With formal diplomatic relations between the U.S. and North Korea on the verge of being established, the meeting no longer seemed awkward. Moreover, the handshake was taking place on the site of the Mojave nuclear plant. Today they would break ground, with the goal of completing the 2-gigawatt thorium reactor within eighteen months.
Construction would proceed simultaneously on multiple fronts. Once the earthquake-resistant foundation work was finished, the reactor, heat exchange systems, generators, and transmission facilities would all be built in parallel. It was Yoo Jae-won’s vision to complete everything in the blink of an eye. The speed was like roasting beans over lightning—something people of the twentieth century struggled to comprehend. Yet the thorium reactor’s modular design made it possible. Westinghouse, though faded, still possessed considerable underlying strength. Even the California state government, initially stunned by the unprecedented pace, had reviewed the hour-by-hour construction schedule and ultimately granted approval.
The “Supreme Leader” referred to Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s second-generation dictator. Many had criticized the loud global publicity surrounding the thorium reactor’s success as wasteful, but the feedback was unmistakably positive. They had not even sent a formal invitation, yet North Korea had dispatched Choi Kwang-geon to the groundbreaking ceremony. It was an extremely encouraging signal.
Choi Kwang-geon personally confirmed what the intelligence team had already reported: North Korea was extremely interested in constructing new nuclear plants. Yoo Jae-won responded without hesitation.
Choi Kwang-geon nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The ones truly surprised were Yoo Jae-won’s closest aides, including Kim Dae-seok. Those who had not yet been briefed on his East Asian strategy wondered if going that far was truly necessary.
North Korea was no longer treated as part of the axis of evil as it once had been, and because it had moved away from pure iron-fist rule and terror politics, its image was not as terrible as before. Still, that was only in comparison to the previous timeline. The majority of South Koreans still viewed the North with deep unease. The idea of Yoo Jae-won traveling there personally filled them with genuine concern.
The Mojave thorium reactor groundbreaking ceremony was so grand that it even drew such an unexpected guest as North Korea. The former Westinghouse employees responsible for construction were especially delighted. They had feared the company’s collapse, but the next-generation thorium reactor had essentially brought them back from the dead. Thanks to that renewed energy, construction in the harsh environment of the Mojave Desert proceeded at remarkable speed.
“As expected, one killer item makes everything run smoothly.”
A month had passed since the first groundbreaking for the thorium reactor in the Mojave Desert. With the new thorium reactor as its flagship product, the first half of 2005 had flown by like a bullet. Despite the frantic pace, every division of the business was progressing smoothly. The interns selected from the first graduating class of Deokjin Engineering University had adapted well without a single dropout. The thorium reactor remained an intensely hot topic.
Had Yoo Jae-won simply announced the technology and waited passively for orders, he would still be facing constant challenges regarding its safety and economics. But after acquiring Westinghouse and breaking ground on a massive 2-gigawatt plant in California’s Mojave Desert, all objections had vanished. Although cheaper than conventional nuclear construction, it was still a multi-billion-dollar project. Had the thorium reactor been flawed, the U.S. Department of Energy would never have issued the permit, and ID Group would never have invested the capital.
Those who had supported traditional uranium or plutonium-based nuclear power could now only say, “We’ll see.” They believed that no matter how excellent the theory and design, stable operation of large-scale facilities was an entirely different matter. They were convinced that once the Mojave thorium reactor began full operation, problems would almost certainly emerge. Then they would rise up like wildfire. It was clearly a vain hope, but for Yoo Jae-won it was welcome news. The loudest voices had fallen silent, giving him time to catch up on other matters.
As a result, his monitor filled with major news stories he had missed while focusing on the thorium reactor business.
The unicorn disguised as a starving donkey—the stem cell fraud scandal—appeared right on schedule as well.
“YouTube really is a true unicorn,” Yoo Jae-won murmured.
In his previous life, he had kept YouTube open until the moment he died. From simple daily vlogs to highly technical content like the core equations of nuclear fusion, the platform had dominated the video service sector for years with its vast and diverse user base. For some reason, its official launch had been delayed by five months compared to the previous timeline. Starting service in July, YouTube announced its presence by running a main-page advertisement on NextCom.
Yoo Jae-won immediately opened a new web browser and accessed the site. The YouTube that greeted him was far cruder and rougher than the version still vivid in his memory.