<div class="floatleft">(http://filmsdefrance.com/img/Jeremy_Irons.jpg)</div><table class="bbc_table"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Character name:</strong></td><td>Nigel Woodridge</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Location:</strong> </td><td>Reactor Control</td></tr><tr><td><strong>With:</strong> </td><td> Lena</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Doing:</strong> </td><td> Troubleshooting</td></tr></tbody></table><br/><hr/><br/>Nigel stepped through the hatch and into the control center.  He had removed his helmet, but still wore his environment suit.  He nodded to the controllers on duty and walked directly to the small room dedicated to the reactor controls.  Lena was there, monitoring the systems that meant life or death to the small colony.  He  tapped on the doorframe and stepped in.<br/><br/>“Good to see you, Lena,” he said with a smile.  She was very attractive, and despite some initial strain between them during their Antarctic training he had learned to trust her abilities.  They had found that the mix of his experience and her theoretical knowledge gave them the ability to confront most problems before they actually became problems.  He hoped this would be one of those cases.<br/><br/>“Look at this,” he said without further preamble.  He touched a spot on the display screen and the reactor coolant pressure display was highlighted.  “As you can see, the reactor is running at normal coolant pressure for this power load, with variance of less than half a percent.  Nothing to be concerned about.”  He touched another control and the display divided into sixteen separate readings, each representing one of the sensor locations inside the reactor.  “Notice 5, 7, and 13,” he said.  Those sensors were varying much more wildly, the pressure dropping by as much as ten percent before returning to normal, then dropping again.<br/><br/>“We saw something very much like this at one of the outlying camps at Imbrium,” he told her.  “The reactor was left dormant for six months and when we turned it back on, we saw this same pattern.  It got worse over the course of the following weeks, and we sent a ‘bot to investigate.”  He leaned against the wall.  “Micro-cracks in the coolant lines.  They’re designed to resist high temperatures, but the strain of going from sub-zero to operating temperatures cracked the lines enough to cause leaks.”<br/><br/>“It could be something else, but I’d bet you a drink or two that we’ll find microscopic cracks in the coolant lines.  Just in case, I brought three spare assemblies down with me, so if that’s what the problem is, we can replace the lines easily.  We can probably salvage the old ones, too.  Fortunately we can shut down one sector at a time, so we won’t lose power to the colony while we check things out or do repairs.”<br/>