Word: alarming
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...buildings were scarcely discernible above the gentle waters of the Susquehanna River, eleven miles southeast of Harrisburg, Pa. Inside the brightly lit control room of Metropolitan Edison's Unit 2, technicians on the lobster shift one night last week faced a tranquil, even boring watch. Suddenly, at 4 a.m., alarm lights blinked red on their instrument panels. A siren whooped a warning. In the understated jargon of the nuclear power industry, an "event" had occurred. In plain English, it was the beginning of the worst accident in the history of U.S. nuclear power production, and of a long, often confused...
When the first alarm sounded inside Unit 2 at 4 a.m. on Wednesday, only about 60 employees were at work. Precisely what the engineers at the control panels did to find out why the turbine had tripped?and just what steps they took next?will be the object of long investigations. Company spokesmen insisted that most of the procedures had been automatic, implying that all of the complex machinery, with its multiple, supposedly infallible back-up systems, had flipped into computer-controlled action...
...this time, in Harrisburg, Lieut Governor William Scranton III expressed alarm that he might be getting inaccurate reports from plant officials. He told reporters: "This situation is more complex than the company first led us to believe. Metropolitan Edison has given you and us conflicting information." Indeed federal investigators from the nearby headquarters of the NRC in King of Prussia reported later in the day that radio activity had been detected as far as 16 miles from the plant, and claimed that radiation within the reactor containment building had risen to a startling 1,000 times its normal level...
Indeed, Scalise had good cause for alarm when the referees made the last of a series of questionable calls with only 1:33 left. The Quakers had just notched their sixth goal when Crimson netminder Kenny First was caught out of the net in a scramble for a loose ball. Under this year's new rules, Harvard was supposed to bring the ball up from midfield within 30 seconds after the tally. But Harvard wasn't ready to start when the refs were. So despite the fact that the zebra suits had failed to issue the mandatory warning...
Oder said the fire broke out at the rear of the home, near the kitchen or television room. It failed to trigger a smoke detector and a fire alarm...