Word: steamingly
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...meeting what looked at first like just another "transient," a minor glitch somewhere in the complex system like so many they had dealt with in the past. Unit 2's huge turbine, which generates 880 megawatts of electricity, had "tripped," shut down automatically, as it should when the steam that turns it has somehow been cut off. The technicians assumed that the cause would be easy to find and correct...
They could hardly have been more wrong. For the next several days, radioactive steam and gas seeped sporadically into the atmosphere from the plant. Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh advised the evacuation of all pregnant women and preschool children living within five miles of Three Mile Island, and thousands of people fled the area. As tension mounted, engineers struggled to cool the reactor's core. There was a genuine danger of a "meltdown," in which the core could drop into the water coolant at the bottom of its chamber, causing a steam explosion that could rupture the 4-ft.-thick concrete...
...television screens and the front pages have barely begun to fade. And here they are, by any measure a full year too soon, about to assault us once again. So brace yourself for those film clips of frigid handshakes at the gates of bleak factories, with candidates snorting white steam from mouths and nostrils, of flinty, numb voters nodding vacantly at vacant campaign promises; of parka-encased reporters up to their knees in snow, watching and waiting in vain for a phrase or a glance that will rise above the level of the completely forgettable...
...Crimson once again outshot the Terriers, and even killed off a two-man advantage late in the second, but could get no closer. Harvard ran out of steam in the third, managing only two shots...
...enough that the core is uncovered, the heat of the reaction melts the steel containment vessel. Then the reactor itself sinks through the plant's floor, into the ground and, in theory, "all the way to China." In reality, it hits ground water first, and sends clouds of radioactive steam shooting into the atmosphere, killing or contaminating everything for miles around. Not a pleasant thought, but one that supplies the film's essential tension...