But long before the project was completed on June 24, temperature readings from Prianichnikov’s sensors had declined yet further, and fear of the China Syndrome abated at last. The heat exchanger, with its intricate network of stainless steel tubing, ten kilometers of control cabling, its two hundred thermocouples and temperature sensors layered in concrete and sandwiched beneath a layer of graphite blocks—the result of weeks of frenzied work by hundreds of miners, soldiers, construction workers, electricians, and engineers—was never even turned on.
