Word: miles
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Nuclear power is more controversial; until recently the mere mention of it made environmentalists blanch. They had good reason, considering the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the problem of radioactive waste and the horror stories about U.S. weapons plants. But the greenhouse effect is forcing some antinuclear activists to rethink their position. "I was a strong opponent of the nuclear program in France," said Brice Lalonde, France's Environment Under Secretary and a former presidential candidate on the Ecologist Party ticket. "Now I am reassessing the whole thing." France gets more than 70% of its electricity from nuclear...
Nuclear plants have the potential of providing abundant supplies of electricity without spewing pollutants into the atmosphere. But the nuclear- power industry has failed to deliver on that promise, at least in the U.S. Even before the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, the costs of making atomic power safe were spiraling out of control. Since that episode, the industry has been at a standstill...
...more than 20 years. It was largely ignored in favor of a technology -- the water-cooled reactor -- that had already been proved in nuclear submarines. But water-cooled reactors are particularly susceptible to the rapid loss of coolant, which led to the accidents at both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island...
...rise by 3 ft. to 5 ft. over the next century, as some scientists have predicted? One option would be to construct levees and dikes. The Netherlands, after all, has flourished more than 12 ft. below sea level for hundreds of years. Its newest bulwark is a 5.6-mile dam made up of 131-ft. steel locks that remain open during normal conditions, to preserve the tidal flow that feeds the rich local sea life, but can be closed when rough weather threatens. Venice is beginning to put into place a 1.2-mile flexible seawall that would protect its treasured...
Monday morning, 8:13. The daily commuter train out of the prosperous town of Basingstoke, 46 miles southwest of London, was idling a quarter-mile from Clapham Junction, Europe's busiest railway intersection, while driver Alex McClymont used a trackside phone to report a faulty signal. Tragically, it was too late for that. McClymont watched in helpless horror as a packed express train from the Channel coast rounded the curve at 50 m.p.h. and slashed into the rear of the stopped train. Seconds later an empty passenger train on an adjacent track slammed into the wreckage...