How does one hide the nature of suspicious construction?

My story involves a war torn country's new dictator ordering the construction of an advanced nuclear power plant as part of reconstruction.

Said power plant was built rather quickly, elegantly, and with little foreign expertise. This of course will cause intelligence agencies to become suspicious of this new facility. Worse, it might cast suspicion on the dictator, who has very very big personal secret.

So how does the dictator impede the investigations of foreign agents?

Did no one in the dictator's circle think to say, "Hey, maybe the luxurious exterior of this build will attract some attention we don't want"?

Honestly, the best way to impede an investigation is to deny the need for it. Make sure the dictator has all the t's crossed and i's dotted for all the permits and inspections that could've otherwise been reasonable evidence to poke around further. Pay all your taxes, get all your land claims processed, develop community outreaches in small ways - maybe people in the area can earn honest livings tending the landscape or something, and enjoy the benefits of this building enough to protest when the dictator says, "These investigators want to shut things down!"

Basically, if people already know about this building, bury it in so much goodwill and proper paperwork that there's no legitimate reason to look further. And then get guards. Lots of guards. Physically impede them should these investigators say, "To hell with the paperwork, we have to check it out!"

Oh the facility is fairly normal.

How it get's built is another matter.

It is like suddenly driving around in a car that one can't normally afford. A car that's also of an unknown make and model.

edited 4th Sep '16 1:13:01 PM by Worlder

Can the dictator mask the plant as something lower-tech than it actually is? Create a paper trail that would suggest it's been under construction for longer than it really was, lower the numbers so that they won't arise suspicion, that kind of thing? Dress the fancy power plant in a regular power plant disguise?

News photos and video clips always seem to focus on the cooling towers instead of the reactor building when doing a segment on nuclear power plants. But coal-fired power plants use the same type of cooling towers as nuke plants do. I can easily imagine some ignorant journalist or politician mistaking a coal plant for a nuke plant. An investigator or intelligence agent, not so much.

That said, with some extra money spent one could make it look like a coal power plant to a high enough degree that the investigators wouldn't know unless they got inside. Combine it with the "good will of the people" thing to stop them from being able to get there and you could pull it off if you luck out.

Seriously though, it depends to at least some degree on how big a threat the dictator is deemed by the powers that watch. Because, barring accidents, nuclear power plants are not inherently dangerous, so if the dictator is deemed somewhat benevolent and mostly not a problem by the outside countries then I don't imagine them giving a fjord about his construction of one.

edited 4th Sep '16 8:15:01 PM by Kazeto

Once again it isn't the plant itself that is the problem. It is the process in which it came into being.

The country just got out of a civil war a few years back and mired in poverty even before the war.

This dictator being to turn things around by building a state of the art nuclear power plant in such a piss poor country and within a 5 year period is sure to raise suspicions.

Yes the dictator could've slow things down to a more innocuous pace, but he needs a strong and prosperous nation ASAP.

Perhaps you could imply some kind of rich corporation backing them, and have paper trail that would suggest that some company decided to lend money for a nuclear plant in hopes of putting the country in enough debt to them to essentially turn it into said company's fiefdom? The problem would be finding someone who'd agree to participate in such a misdirection.

Or, have them do a Kansas City Shuffle. Leave a small trail of clues that would suggest that some MegaCorp is behind the plant to throw investigators off the track of the true source of the money. Then, while they meander looking for connection that isn't there, the dictator has them off their back.

That too is not a problem, Worlder. It is common knowledge that infrastructure is necessary to raise the level of living pretty much anywhere, so if they mask is as a normal power plant it's just an issue of them having funds or not having them. If they do then, again, it can just be masqueraded as a coal power plant, and if they don't have the funds then they wouldn't be capable of building it in the first place.

Believe me, most people would not be suspicious if they'd heard that a poor region is scrounging up whatever money they have to build something that will improve standards of living and give them a chance of getting out of being poor. And that the thing happens not to be the exact thing they'd thought it to be but still does the same thing, well ... outside of intelligence agencies (who would take interest regardless so it's whether or not you can stop them rather than whether or not they'd take interest) and conspiracy theorists (yeah, like anyone takes those guys seriously), nobody would really care.

So really, I think that you are afraid of breaking the suspension of disbelief and are going too far in the other direction.

Actually, I just want some interludes between certain chapters about intelligence agents attempting to find out the dictator's "big secret" to his success.

edited 5th Sep '16 8:53:22 AM by Worlder

And I don't see why wouldn't you be able to have those.

Unless you want something specific to happen then and do not know how to put it in, in which case it would be nice to know what exactly that thing is.

Although I don't really know why a nuclear power plant would be a key to anyone's success; I mean, it is just a place that produces power, after all.

EDIT: mistead the above post ignore what I wrote.

edited 5th Sep '16 1:31:45 PM by EternaMemoria

If that were the case, wouldn't trying to hide it as something that is not a nuclear power plant only serve to make people more suspicious?

And if the whole deal with it is stopping the spies from discovering anything then it really isn't about construction but rather access prevention and counter-espionage. Which is why I did not consider this an option before, as it wouldn't make much sense for it to be obfuscated in such a way for the people who are giving ideas.

Basically, there is no way to conceal the fact that a power plant has come on line well before a country like that could have pulled it off. Obviously, they themselves arent responsible for that happening, so its a question of who was. Any foreign intelligence service that cares will be looking for the hidden "patrons" behind the scenes. What happens after that depends on what the truth is. Was it aliens?

Close but no not aliens.

Time travelers? Whatever it is, if it's an "Out Of Context Problem", as Ian Banks called it, that is, someone from outside the normal world that the in-universe characters are aware of, then they dont have to conceal the fact of it going online, they just need to conceal who made it possible. You do that by setting up a plausible explanation (or several of them) that can fool the various international spy services (ie, the Americans think the Chinese did it, the Chinese think the Russians did it, and the Russians think Germany did it. Germany doesn't care who did it).