Word: meltdowns
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Still, Fed watchers say Greenspan has the savvy to brake the economy without skidding it into a recession. Many credit the Fed with helping prevent a slump by easing credit after the 1987 stock crash. "Ever since the market meltdown, ; Greenspan has been walking on eggs," says Pierre Rinfret, a New York City- based economist. "He's making every move very cautiously...
...vital component in atom bombs. But if approved by Congress, the Idaho facility could play an even more important role in the civilian use of nuclear power. For it is based on what proponents claim is a fail-safe technology, one that virtually eliminates the danger of a meltdown...
...nuclear reactors work by splitting large atoms into smaller pieces, thus releasing heat. The challenge is to keep the core of nuclear fuel from overheating and melting into an uncontrollable mass that can breach containment walls and release radioactivity. One way to prevent a meltdown is to make sure the fuel is always surrounded with circulating coolant -- ordinary water in most commercial reactors. To guard against mechanical failures that could interrupt the transfer of heat, most reactors employ multiple backup systems, a strategy known as "defense in depth...
...problem with defense in depth is that no matter how many layers of safety are built into a conventional reactor, it can never be 100% safe against a meltdown. At its Idaho plant, the Energy Department wants to try a different strategy. Rather than construct a giant atomic pile that requires the cooling of large quantities of concentrated fuel, designers propose to build a series of four small-scale, modular reactors that use fuel in such small quantities that their cores could not achieve meltdown temperatures under any circumstances. The fuel would be packed inside tiny heat-resistant ceramic spheres...
...complete meltdown of the Bright Center ice might have slowed the Harvard attack. The Eagles alone could...