Word: melt
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...describe the worst possible kind of nuclear power accident. It would happen if the core of the reactor, in which the chain reactions are taking place, were accidentally uncovered, instead of being surrounded by water within its pressure vessel. When the core is uncovered, its heat would melt through the vessel, and the concrete and steel building that surrounds it, right into the ground--and in the terms of the jargon, "right through to China." That wouldn't happen, of course. The reactor core would soon hit ground water, and send jets of radioactive steam shooting into the air, contaminating...
Indeed, Armageddon is something of a growth industry. In an avalanche of recent books, polar caps melt, a new ice age begins, the oceans disappear, the ozone level is destroyed, terrorists touch off a nuclear war, astronauts bring back a deadly Andromeda Strain. Destruction may also come from a maddened god (Gore Vidal's Kalki). Or in an unending snowstorm (George Stone's Blizzard). Or from the scorching "greenhouse effect" of too much CO2 in the atmosphere (Arthur Herzog's Heat). Or through global political disintegration (The Third World War: August 1985 by a group of English...
...enough for one person. As it was, he couldn't pitch his tent properly or use his stove. The tent fabric whipped back and forth in 35-40 m.p.h. winds and the Harvard senior occasionally worried about dehydration--since he couldn't use the stove, he was unable to melt snow for water...
...often intimidates his staff. Not long ago, he coldly dismissed an Assistant Secretary, a man whom he had talked into coming from California to join him, with barely a word. Stories about his superiority complex are numerous. "I saw him melt the stars off a four-star general, one at a time," remembers an aide with awe. The aide recalls something else: a Schlesinger mean streak that sometimes puts people into paralysis. One night a Schlesinger bodyguard noticed as he drove his boss to a formal dinner party that the Secretary had forgotten to put on his black...
...position [Bishop Abel] Muzerewa was in Rhodesia a year ago. Open that society up, and let them all talk freely--let Mandela come off Robben Island prison tomorrow and say that Buthelezi is a no-no, which he would--and Buthelezi's support would melt like the snow in summer...