Word: domes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...also fails. Deprived of the coolant that controls its temperature, the reactor begins melting in its own heat. Then the machine and its fuel collapse into a molten mass that explosively converts the coolant water into steam. The resulting blasts rip open the power plant's massive concrete dome, releasing a cloud of radioactive gases. Tens of thousands of people living near by are contaminated by radioactivity. Many die within days. Others suffer lingering illnesses and develop cancer years later...
...people who run the Superdome are unfettered by petty considerations, and see the Dome in broader, less mundane terms. If you go on a tour of the Dome a tape broadcast over its public address system will tell you that it is "more than a building or a stadium or a hall," that it is "the depository of Louisiana's belief in itself and a budding, exhilarating, moving certainty that tomorrow can be now." Like the Seven Wonders of the World, the tape tells you, "it is a monument to man's daring imagination, ingenuity, and intelligence--awesome in size...
Seen in that light a lot of the Superdome's flaws just melt away. The Dome may have overrun its original cost estimates by more than 500 per cent, becoming the biggest gravy train for Louisiana builders and politicians in years--but so, for all we know, may have the Pyramid of Cheops, and who remembers that now? What does it matter that the Superdome is actually ugly, a vast heap of metal that now dominates downtown New Orleans? Or that it has bad acoustics and ventilation or that nobody can find the bathrooms, or that...
...know they couldn't possibly get anything done there, and they go about their work with an air of defeat. The security guard who kicks me out of the press box probably knows as well as I do that I am going over to the other side of the Dome to sneak into other boxes, and that he won't be able to do anything about...
...which could absorb the 66,000-seat Astrodome with room to spare. Last week Pontiac, Mich., opened its 80,400-seat, $55.7 million Metropolitan Stadium, 25 miles northwest of Detroit, with an exhibition football game between the Detroit Lions and the Kansas City Chiefs. Seattle hopes to complete the dome on the 60,000-seat, $60 million King County Stadium next year "in time for the baseball season"-even though Seattle does not as yet have a dome-town baseball team. The most controversial of all is the 27-story-high Superdome, which resembles a giant flying saucer set down...