Word: mile
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...wound through the canyons southwest of Mount Shasta, 60 miles below the Oregon border, the Sacramento River was a babbling stream, rugged enough to attract kayakers, yet so pristine that it supported a thriving population of blue-ribbon trout. Each year the 45-mile stretch of river lured thousands of anglers and tourists, drawn by the bucolic setting and the reputation of its native rainbows and browns...
Remarkably enough, the nuclear building program has withstood the two great shocks of the atomic era. The 1979 near meltdown at Three Mile Island spawned new safety regulations. The catastrophe at Chernobyl in 1986 set off a public outcry in most of Western Europe, forcing some governments to curtail nuclear programs -- but not France. Five reactors will be added to the national grid in this decade. The Superphenix fast-breeder reactor, a joint venture with Italy and Germany, is working, though it has been dogged by technical problems and will never recover its $4.5 billion development cost...
Among the grands projets, none is more spectacular than the high-speed TGV (train a grande vitesse). Since the TGVs first went into operation between Paris and Lyons in 1981, cutting travel time in half (to two hours for the 290-mile trip) by averaging 168 m.p.h., they have carried 140 million passengers without accident -- which the French claim is a record for a transport system...
...that it is compatible with existing tracks and station facilities; it moves to high speed only on specially built lines outside the towns. The TGV program achieved an American breakthrough when the Texas high-speed-rail authority chose the French system over a German competitor for a 600-mile high-speed route linking Dallas with Houston and San Antonio -- a contract worth $5.8 billion on completion in 1998. In the past few years, additional TGV lines have been built toward Rennes in Brittany, Bordeaux in the southwest and Le Mans in the northwest; by 2010 the government will invest...
Barbara, a single mother in her 30s who looks as if tiredness is a permanent condition, slogs up the four-mile trail from a roadhead at Texas Falls. She carries a big, scruffy backpack and a nursing baby. A couple of other kids skip ahead. She comes to Gatherings because "I can feel safe for a few days." Safe from what? She doesn't say, and it doesn't seem necessary...