The Moonpool — P.T. Deutermann

I remembered it from high school chemistry, one of those experiments where we made hydrogen. It was more of an acidic sensation on the palate than a real smell, but I recognized it. The pile of spent fuel at the bottom was beginning to outgas. Next would come the fire to end all fires. . . .

A private detective working in Wilmington, North Carolina, is found dead in a gas-station restroom, apparently poisoned. But when her body sets off radiation alarms in the pathologist's office, suspicion falls on the nearby Helios nuclear power plant, a heavily guarded facility with supposedly failsafe procedures.

As the FBI, local police, and the power plant's own security team investigate, ex-cop Cam Richter, head of the agency that employed the dead woman, begins his own inquiries. What was his detective investigating? And how could one person be poisoned by radiation without others being exposed?

Cam soon finds himself up against powerful forces that will stop at nothing to keep the plant's problems secret. The most vulnerable part of Helios is its "moonpool"--the radioactive storage pond that cools spent but volatile reactor fuel and must be kept completely full. Racing against time, Cam discovers an inside threat, which will use the plant's own systems to begin an unstoppable, disastrous sequence of events.