42 The Critical Piece

In a remote corner of the Kingdom of Dawn, operations were taking place that would soon change the world. Sean was sent by King Roland in order to oversee this operation. Their base was at Thorn Town, a small town at the bottom of Cage Mountain, which contained the area of interest.

Sean had his task from the king, and though he didn't know what was so important about it, he knew that he needed to follow his orders to the best of his capacity. Roland had come across information of a certain substance called uranium which was supposedly here. Sean had no idea what this uranium was, but judging from how serious the king was when giving him this task, it seemed that this substance was quite important.

Sean had no idea just how important uranium is. Nuclear power was indeed very useful, but it was far from revolutionary. After all, a nuclear power plant was not all that different from a coal power plant. In fact, one could say that modern society still runs on steam power. What the atom revolutionized was not industry, but rather warfare. The scepter of nuclear war had kept the world at peace for over 70 years. While there were small conflicts, no major powers ever fought each other directly. The world had an unprecedented era of peace.

Sean's work in the Kingdom of Dawn would set into motion events beyond his comprehension.

Sean was instructed to go to Cage Mountain and find the ruins. They were to go into the Kingdom of Dawn, which was problematic because the kingdom was independent and not under the control of Graycastle. However, when both Graycastle and the church put pressure on the Kingdom of Dawn, they quickly capitulated and granted the Graycastle operatives permission to do what essentially whatever they wanted to retrieve the substance.

Once their group got to Cage Mountain, they first needed to disarm all of the traps on the mountain. The kingdom had put these traps there to deter invaders, but now they were a hindrance. They recruited locals and made a trap disarming team to clear the entire mountain. After the way was clear, they searched the mountain and found the cursed temple.

To retrieve the objects within, they bought death row prisoners from the Kingdom of Dawn and put them to work. Yes, it did sound a lot like slavery, but Sean really didn't care. Besides, they were going to give them their freedom after 10 years which was better than being executed for their crimes. Sean didn't pay too much attention to any gray tactic the nobles in the Kingdom of Dawn might have used.

After they got their first batch of prisoners, the workers were sent to loot the temple. There were piles of artifacts that were retrieved. Those were sent back to Neverwinter inside metal boxes lined with thick walls of lead. The murals on the walls were also carefully removed and taken back.

After looting the temple, they had to start looking for other sources of uranium, which weren't as easy to find as just picking it off the ground. With the aid of a witch named Azima who was sent with them, they identified deposits of uranium buried deep within the ground. Sean thought that those mines were probably where whoever built those temples got the stuff to make their devices.

Now, the difficult part was going to begin. Sean didn't know much about mining. Sure, he grew up near a lot of mines and miners but Sean never actually did any mining. Besides, any mining techniques he did know about had long become outdated when the new technology was created. So, mining specialists were sent from Neverwinter in order to help properly design and operate the mines.

Mining was far from just sending in hordes of peasants with pickaxes to hammer at rock. The specialists brought along many more tools to help with the mining. First was the steam engine. The steam engine was used to pull carts along the tracks in the tunnel to transport the mined material to the surface. It was also used to help pump the mines to remove the water that was flooding some areas.

Explosives were also used to help remove rock through blasting. The dynamite was much faster than mining by hand. That is not to say that the structural integrity of the mines wasn't important. Blasting was only used when appropriate and if it would cause a cave in then it wouldn't be used. The mine tunnels were also reinforced to help prevent the walls from falling in. The engineering that goes into a mine was quite extensive.

Although some safety measures were taken, mining was by no means a safe job. Without even mentioning radiation, there were a myriad of other things that could kill someone. Sean supposed this was why they used prisoners to do the mining since they were expendable.

The mining was proceeding at a steady pace and they were able to send a lot of ore. Sean did notice that what came out of the ground was very different than what was in the temple. He figured that there would have to be a lot more processing to be done before it turned into the final product. He was right about that. Separating the uranium from the other stuff was actually the easy part. The main barrier to nuclear proliferation back on Earth was actually the enrichment of uranium. Enrichment involved separating uranium-235 from uranium-238 which have slightly different masses. U-235 only consists of less than 1% of uranium found in the world, but weapons grade uranium needs to be at least 85% U-235. High powered centrifuges were needed to separate out U-235 and U-238 because of how little of a difference there was in mass.

All of this was far beyond Sean's understanding. He was not the one in charge of making weapons, he just mined the uranium. The uranium made its way back to Graycastle where it would be stored. It was unlikely that enough sufficiently strong centrifuges could be made, but maybe there were other options.