Word: contender
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Pollard and his colleagues cite a series of safety hazards they claim the NRC has tolerated in nuclear plants around the nation, including Three Mile Island. For example, the scientists contend that defects in 26 reactors built by General Electric might cause the release of radiation in an accident similar to the one in Pennsylvania. The scientists have also produced a pamphlet, called the "Nugget File," that describes mishaps at nuclear plants, like the use of a basketball to plug a pipe leading from a radioactive tank...
...nation cannot let the debate end there. Three Mile Island vividly illustrated the dangers of reliance on nuclear power. Disaster was avoided, but probably not by much. Experts who never considered the possibility that a hydrogen bubble would hinder attempts to shut down a balking reactor can no longer contend that the chances of serious accident are so tiny as to be totally discounted. The radiation released was well below the Government's standards for safety, but cancer rates among people exposed to fallout from the atomic-bomb tests of the 1950s and shipyard workers who repair atom-powered...
Muslims believe that God decrees everything that happens in the cosmos. Some critical Western scholars contend that this doctrine leads to a kind of passive fatalism, but Islamic theologians strongly deny that qadar (divine will) negates a person's freedom to act. It merely means, says Muhammad Abdul Rauf, director of the Islamic Center in Washington, that "when some misfortune befalls us, we resign ourselves to it as something coming from God, instead of despairing...
...argues that divestiture would be "very likely to prove ineffective in achieving its objectives." This is the most disturbing aspect of our President's position. Many of us arrived here believing that one does what is right even if the results of doing so are unclear. No one would contend that Harvard alone can end apartheid or force corporate withdrawal from South Africa--the University simply does not control a large enough share of the stock of any single corporation--neither do all but a handful of powerful shareholders. But it is not Harvard's moral obligation to end apartheid...
MANY SCIENTISTS contend that nuclear power never can be made acceptably safe. Other experts assert that reactors are already safe enough, or at least reasonably close to such a level. But even if reactors are safe, the admittedly ever-present risk of human error may prove reason enough for serious objection to and possibly abstention from use of nuclear power...