Word: designate
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...recent accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania clearly demonstrates the combination of design flaws, technical mishaps, and human error that can cause a catastrcphic reactor accident. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the reactor's design was ineffective in containing radioactive water; safety and monitoring equipment failed to perform properly when called upon; plant operators apparently forgot to turn on important safety valves deactivated two weeks before the accident and twice turned off the reactor's emergency cooling system prematurely...
...climate of public debate about the nation's use of reactors to provide energy. The NRC has not suggested that the plants are unsafe. But engineers from Pennsylvania's Duquesne Light Co., which operates one of the plants, and the Boston firm of Stone and Webster, which designed all five, found a mathematical defect in the computer program used to design some of the plants' coolant pipes so that they would be strong enough to withstand a major earthquake. The firms promptly reported their discovery to the commission. Even though it recognized that the probability of earthquakes...
...grudgingly announced a conditional willingness to negotiate, the menace of a wider, Sino-Soviet conflict appeared remote. Dropping its warnings of retaliation against China, the Soviet Union smugly noted that Peking appeared to have "sobered up," and congratulated itself on the restraint that had foiled China's "perfidious design" of "instigating a clash between our country and the United States...
Overhanging all the ferment is the shadow of the Soviet Union, which has done little to promote the troubles but tries to capitalize on any chance to lessen U.S. influence. Said Kremlinologist Dimitri Simes: "I don't believe the Soviet Union has any grand design in this arc of instability, any master plan, any timetable. All those things belong to the imagination of some editorial writers and intelligence analysts." But Simes thinks that the Soviets are so eager to damage the U.S. that they will even act against some of their own national interests...
DIED. Henrich Focke, 88, German aircraft designer who helped develop the helicopter; in Bremen. Inspired by the drawings of Michelangelo, Focke in the mid-1930s built the FW-61, the first helicopter to receive an international certificate of airworthiness. Unsympathetic to the Nazi regime, Focke was removed from his company (Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau AG) before World War II and thus had no part in the production of the firm's famed fighter-bomber, the FW-190. He continued to design aircraft in France, Britain and Brazil, returning to his native country...