Three Mile Island: Nuclear Nightmare
In the dead of night, the hulks of four 372-ft. cooling towers and two high domed nuclear reactor container buildings were scarcely discernible above the gentle waters of the Susquehanna River, eleven miles southeast of Harrisburg, Pa. Inside the brightly lit control room of Metropolitan Edison’s Unit 2, technicians on the lobster shift one night last week faced a tranquil, even boring watch. Suddenly, at 4 a.m., alarm lights blinked red on their instrument panels. A siren whooped a warning. In the understated jargon of the nuclear power industry, an “event” had occurred. In plain English, it was the beginning of the worst accident in the history of U.S. nuclear power production, and of a long, often confused nightmare that threw the future of the nuclear industry into question.
Rad Storm Rising
A hundred and fifty years ago the Russian philosopher Petr Chaadayev wrote that “we are one of those nations that somehow are not part of mankind but exist only for the sake of teaching the world some kind of terrible lesson.” In the area of nuclear affairs the steady emission of environmental horror stories from the USSR confirms that the Soviet Union is in the process of teaching the world another in its series of terrible lessons.
Indian Point Blank: How Worried Should We Be About the Nuclear Plant Up the River?
By now, Indian Point 3 has collected six hundred and twenty-four tons of spent uranium, and Indian Point 2 has amassed eight hundred and eight tons. Although the fuel is of no use in generating electricity, it is still highly radioactive and produces a great deal of heat, which is why it must always be kept submerged. Two years ago, after much prodding from groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists, the N.R.C. released a study looking at the risks of a spent-fuel fire. While the commission concluded that the risk of such a fire was low—the fuel would have to be left out of water for several hours—it acknowledged that the consequences “could be comparable to those for a severe reactor accident.”
Inside The Deal That Made Bill Gates $350 Million (1986)
On the 25th anniversary of the company’s IPO, Fortune presents the inside story of Microsoft’s stock issue. For six months, writer Uttal followed around a young Bill Gates, whom he dubbed the “rabid rabbit” as he prepared himself and his company for the public markets.
Excerpt: The Source of All Things
I knew Matt wanted to hike up the glacier, to feel the cold creep into his boots and to peer into the frightening ice chasms. And I knew he wanted to go there with me. The St. Elias Range looms beyond Kennicott, swathed in enormous sheets of ice and towering over the clouds and the birds and most bush planes at eighteen thousand feet high. It’s big enough to create its own weather, and mountaineers have come back from three-week trips with stories of white-outs and avalanches when it’s still summer in McCarthy. One day, as Matt and I stood at the bar smashing blood-bloated mosquitoes onto our forearms, I asked him on a date.
Amazon Crusader. Chevron Pest. Fraud?
Attorney Steven Donziger won an $18 billion pollution verdict against Chevron. But is he clean enough to collect? “Court papers seek to transform Donziger from a humanitarian firebrand into the mastermind of a conspiracy ‘to extort, defraud, and otherwise tortiously injure’ a corporation with a market capitalization of $208 billion, more than three times the size of Ecuador’s annual economic output.”
Data Mining: How Companies Now Know Everything About You
Google’s Ads Preferences believes I’m a guy interested in politics, Asian food, perfume, celebrity gossip, animated movies and crime but who doesn’t care about “books & literature” or “people & society.” (So not true.) Yahoo! has me down as a 36-to-45-year-old male who uses a Mac computer and likes hockey, rap, rock, parenting, recipes, clothes and beauty products; it also thinks I live in New York, even though I moved to Los Angeles more than six years ago. Alliance Data, an enormous data-marketing firm in Texas, knows that I’m a 39-year-old college-educated Jewish male who takes in at least $125,000 a year, makes most of his purchases online and spends an average of only $25 per item. Specifically, it knows that on Jan. 24, 2004, I spent $46 on “low-ticket gifts and merchandise” and that on Oct. 10, 2010, I spent $180 on intimate apparel.
The Careless Language of Sexual Violence
We live in a culture that is very permissive where rape is concerned. While there are certainly many people who understand rape and the damage of rape, we also live in a time that necessitates the phrase “rape culture.” This phrase denotes a culture where we are inundated, in different ways, by the idea that male aggression and violence toward women is acceptable and often inevitable.
F Is the New H
Pure fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine, and doses are measured in micrograms instead of milligrams: Unless it’s mixed very precisely and very evenly, the strength of the drug can vary dramatically—dangerously—from one hit to the next. A few years ago, the Midwest and East Coast saw at least 1,000 heroin overdoses after a lab in Toluca, Mexico, produced fentanyl that was then cut into the heroin supply chain, making the heroin much, much stronger—unevenly so.
Is it Dunk and Done for Perry Jones?
You might assume that if Jones left Baylor after just one season for the N.B.A., it would be a terrible disappointment to the coaches who recruited him when he was in his early teens — then had to keep in constant contact to make sure no one poached him. (Such vigilance is known as baby-sitting.) But that is not the case. If Jones leaves, it will further validate Baylor’s program and show everyone — the media, potential recruits, influential summer-league coaches who control players and sometimes broker them to colleges — that Baylor is a place that attracts top talent and produces N.B.A. millionaires. It will make it easier for coach Scott Drew to recruit more players like Jones, who then, of course, also might also leave after one season.
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