Word: overheat
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...double purpose. On the one hand, he wants to discourage people's hopes for immediate delivery of all the goodies, ranging from jobs to health-care reform, that candidate Clinton promised. On the other hand, he needs to reassure nervous investors that he will not worsen the deficit or overheat the economy. Such moves could cause bond buyers to drive U.S. interest rates higher and torpedo the recovery...
...nuclear reactors work by splitting large atoms into smaller pieces, producing heat. The danger is that the nuclear fuel, unless properly cooled, can overheat and melt through containment walls, releasing radioactivity into the environment. Most commercial reactors guard against meltdown by ensuring that the fuel is always surrounded by circulating coolant, usually ordinary / water. But what if a pipe bursts and the water is lost? Or if the water boils off? To prevent such mishaps, today's reactors have backup systems and backups to the backups. But no matter how many layers of redundancy are built into a conventional reactor...
...imposing a hiring freeze and cutbacks on travel and office and computer equipment, the agency has closed the gap to $50 million. But as peak season approaches, officials are concerned that the tax-collection system might overheat from the heavy workload. The agency admits that 1 out of every 3 callers to the tax-information hot line is given a wrong answer, and some employees have doubled up on their responsibilities. The IRS says the processing of returns will probably not be affected, although some cheats could slip by undetected...
...long as a coolant (water in most reactors) keeps flowing around the reactor core, it carries heat away, and the temperature stays under control. If the coolant is lost, the core begins to overheat, like a car with a broken radiator. The chain reaction promptly ceases because rising temperatures cause the fuel to expand, which increases the distances between individual atoms and makes it less likely that the neutrons emitted by one will hit the nucleus of another. But the spontaneous radioactive decay of nuclei goes on. The uncooled reactor core could eventually get hot enough to melt through...
March 28, 1979. In the biggest U.S. mishap, one of two reactors at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pa., lost its coolant because of equipment malfunctions and human error. The loss of coolant caused the radioactive fuel to overheat and led to a partial meltdown. Some radioactive material escaped, but a potentially major disaster was averted. Although no one is known to have died as a result of the accident, the hazard posed to local residents is still being debated...