Word: nuclearization
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...belched by the internal combustion engine. The surest solution would be to ban all cars from cities -a proposal that actually passed the California state senate in July before it was killed in a house committee. Another is to build fume-free auto engines run by electricity or even nuclear power. But none of this is likely to delight Detroit automakers or the politically potent oil industry. Is there any compromise solution...
...ground. If the temblor strikes a populated area, roads may be torn up, buildings toppled and untold lives lost - as happened in Northeast Iran last year, when as many as 22,000 people were killed in two successive quakes. Such destructive force seems as devastating as a man-made nuclear blast. Fascinated by the awesome similarity, three Uni versity of Miami seismologists have now proposed using the power of the atom to tame the mighty rumbles of the earth...
...Nuclear detonations at strategic locations far below the surface, they suggest, could be used to keep earthquakes under control. The theory is based on the inherent characteristics of quakes...
Writing in Science, the Miami seismologists argue that nuclear devices might relieve the stresses before they go on the rampage. Exploded two to three miles underground at intervals of twelve to 30 miles along a fault zone, the bombs would set off a series of relatively small shocks. Properly timed, these jolts would jog along the crust ever so slightly to release the forces working against it. The blasts would, in effect, be seismic safety valves, letting off small but significant amounts of pressure whenever an earthquake threatened...
...they may eventually be able to predict quakes by carefully calculating earth stresses. Still more delicate would be the decision on the size of the bomb. The Miami seismologists-Cesare Emiliani, Christopher G. A. Harrison and Mary Swanson-say that the job probably could be done by high-yield nuclear devices of one to ten megatons, presumably H-bombs. But other seismologists point out that an explosion meant only to keep the earth's crust moving slightly may, in fact, make it lurch violently-and actually precipitate a major quake...