Word: thickness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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 walls of the containment building; or the molten core could burn through the even thicker concrete base and deep into the earth. In either case, lethally radioactive gases would be released, causing a nuclear catastrophe...
...which the fuel melts through the floor of the containment building into the ground and possibly erupts in a geyser of steam and debris upon hitting the ground water, releasing a radioactive cloud into the air. As the final precaution, the reactor and primary loop are shielded by a thick concrete containment dome, which should prevent the venting of any radioactivity into the atmosphere-as long as a meltdown does not occur and if there are no other mishaps or blunders. Obviously, at Three Mile Island, these fail-safe systems somehow failed...
...minutes after midnight on April 14, some 2,500 thick letters and 9,000 thin ones will leave the Providence post office. The thick letters offer admission to Brown, a highly selective Ivy League university. The thin letters say no or relegate applicants to the limbo of the waiting list. Those who go through thick and thin are participating in a process that mixes careful weighing, educated guesswork and plain horse trading. TIME's Evan Thomas sat in on the admissions committee. His report...
...committee passes around a thick application folder from "Mary." "Whoops!" says Rogers. "A 'Pinocchio'!" In Brown admissions jargon, that means her "guidance counselor has checked off boxes rating her excellent for academic ability but only good or average for humor, imagination and character. On the printed recommendation form, the low checks stick out from the high ones like a long, thin nose. "A rating of average usually means the guidance counselor thinks there is something seriously wrong," explains Admissions Officer Paulo de Oliveira. Mary's interview with a Brown alumnus was also lukewarm, and worse...
...going to get through the next 4% hrs. because it's too early for a martini, and besides, you want to throw up. So you reach for that little paper bag in the seat-back pocket, and, hello! What's this? A slick, thick, technicolor magazine throbbing with lively articles on travel, finance, health, law, politics. You become so engrossed in a piece on the revitalized riverfront in SAT that you don't notice when the left wing...