title: Skipjack-class submarine

text: The design of the prototype HMS Dreadnought is closely related to the Skipjack class. The entire aft section of HMS Dreadnought was identical to the Skipjack class as the hull was built around the reactor and could not be changed but the fore section was based on earlier British studies into nuclear submarine design, great care had to be taken to marry the two designs alignment.


title: Skipjack-class submarine

text: "Skipjack" was authorized in the FY 1956 new construction program and commissioned in April 1959. Each hull cost around $40 million. "Skipjack" was certified as the "world's fastest submarine" after initial sea trials in March 1959, although the actual speed attained was classified. The "Skipjack"s remained the fastest US nuclear-powered submarines until the first of the "Los Angeles" class entered service in 1974. This was due to the increased size of the "Thresher" and "Sturgeon" classes, which retained "Skipjack"s S5W power plant, plus the introduction of the "skewback" screw, which was quiet but mechanically inefficient. The "Skipjack"s saw service during the Vietnam War and most of the Cold War. The "Skipjack"-class submarines were withdrawn from service in the late 1980s and early 1990s except for , which sank on 22 May 1968 southwest of the Azores while returning from a Mediterranean deployment, with all 99 crewmembers lost.


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: In Indian philosophy and Indian religions, samskaras or sanskaras (Sanskrit: संस्कार) are mental impressions, recollections, or psychological imprints. In Hindu philosophies, "samskaras" are a basis for the development of karma theory. In Buddhism the Sanskrit term Saṅkhāra is used to describe 'formations'. In Pali it is referred to as Saṅkhāra.


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: According to various schools of Indian philosophy, every action, intent or preparation by an individual leaves a "samskara" (impression, impact, imprint) in the deeper structure of the person's mind. These impressions then await volitional fruition in that individual's future, in the form of hidden expectations, circumstances or a subconscious sense of self-worth. These "Samskaras" manifest as tendencies, karmic impulses, subliminal impressions, habitual potencies or innate dispositions. In ancient Indian texts, the theory of "Samskara" explains how and why human beings remember things, and the effect that memories have on people's suffering, happiness and contentment.


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: The Sanskrit word "saṃskāra" (संस्कार) has various context-driven meanings that broadly refer to "the putting together, accomplishing well, making perfect, a form of solemn recognition and getting ready" and "mental impression, recollection". The first context is at the etymological foundation of Sanskara term for rites of passage, while it is the second context, as a form of disposition, impression or behavioral inclination, that is at the etymological root of Sanskara word as a psychological concept in Indian philosophies.


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: The concept of Samskara is also discussed as "Vasana" (Sanskrit: वासना vāsanā), particularly in the Vaiśeṣika school of Hinduism. "Vasana" also means "impression, inclination of anything remaining unconsciously in the mind".


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: "Samskara", or "Sankhara," is a significant concept across major schools of Hindu philosophy as well as Buddhism and Jainism. The schools of Indian philosophy differ on the specific mechanisms about how "samskara" operates at the subconscious level. For example, Buddhism considers "samskara" as "causal continua" while being consistent with its "there is no self, no soul" premise, whereas the Vedic traditions within Hinduism consider "samskara" as "relational properties" (an impression, mark, impulse, tendency or a form of psychological potential energy within) that rests inside the "self, soul" of every person. In Yoga, Vedanta and Nyaya schools of Hinduism, "samskara" constitute an affective and motivational field that contributes to the value structure within the person. They subconsciously or consciously endorse the basic inner drives that propel a human being in future action, future premises, future thoughts or future judgments.


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: Das states that the "Samskara rites of passage" is a subset of actions in a human being's life, where going through the rite within the traditions of Hinduism, affects the individual internally as well as externally in how society perceives the person. This occurs in the form of impressions and imprint within, that is "samskara".


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: The Hindu schools differ in the details, but all posit that "samskara" are formed in every individual by a number of ways. This includes perceptions (what one sees, hears, touches, tastes, smells), "chitta" cognition (what one feels and thinks), willful actions, and also intentions before and during the action. Training and study, in these schools, is a form of exposition, introspective realization and in many cases practice or repetition to make the "impression, imprint" part of one's nature, where the practice reinforces the dispositions ("samskara") and dispositions reinforce the practice, in a circular feedback. Scholars state that David Hume's "impressions" theory is similar to Samskara theory of Hinduism. The Hindu schools rely on "samskara" theory as one of the pillars for their epistemology ("pramana"), wherein they explain how and why man knows anything, remembers anything, expects anything, feels fulfillment, feels frustration, feels freedom and joy, or feels suffering and pain. "Samskara" are the impressions and dispositions that develop and accumulate deep inside a person, according to these schools, from perception, inference, choices, preparation, practice, interaction with others, thoughts, intent, willful actions and such karma. These manifest, Hindu philosophies state, as habits, behavior, tendencies, psychological predispositions and dispositions.


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: Actions, studies, diligent preparation and inner resolutions trigger Samskaras – hidden impressions or dispositions – in the psyche of an individual, and these influence how the individual acts, perceives self and the manner in which the individual responds or accepts the karmic circumstances and the future. Ian Whicher explains that, in the philosophical theories of Hinduism, every karma (action, intent) leaves a "samskara" (impression, impact, imprint) in the deeper structure of human mind. This impression then awaits volitional fruition, in the form of hidden expectations, circumstances or unconscious sense of self-worth. It manifests as tendency, karmic impulse, subliminal impression, habitual potency or innate dispositions.


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: In Samkhya and Yoga schools, Sankhara, also spelled as Samskara, are impressions or residues that affect an individual's Gunas (behavior attributes). These impressions constitute part of the mechanistic foundation behind ancient Indian scholars' explanation on how karma theory works in practice. Samskara are explained as dispositions, character or behavioral traits either as default from birth or Samskara are behavioral traits perfected over time through Yoga, through conscious shaping of inner self, one's desire, sense of moral responsibility and through practice.


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: In Yoga school of Hinduism, all actions and intents lead to impressions and memories, whether they are active or hidden, conscious or unconscious. A person may not remember his or her past karma, yet the impressions shape his character, the habits, the circumstances, the essence of that person because of the impressions left by the karma. These tendencies, subtle traces and innate characteristics, states the Yoga school, continue to affect the person's present actions, assumptions, attitudes ("bhava"), mind ("buddhi"), moral response and interactions with everyone, everything and self. Vyasa, Patanjali and other ancient Indian scholars refer to these as karmic residues ("karmasaya"). Personality, states Patanjali, is the sum total combination of all these impressions and subtle traces ("samskaras"). Individuals tend to do what they did in the past, man forms habit and often returns to those habits, and behaviors tend to repeat because of these "samskaras", according to these Yoga scholars.


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: These are viewed as traces or temperament that evolves through the refinement of an individual inner consciousness and expressed personality, and is a form of "being-preparedness" in Vedantic psychology. All physical, verbal and mental activity, according to the Vedanta school of Hinduism, creates "Samskara", or traces inside a person. These "Samskaras" together then manifest as inner personality and external circumstances, and depending then on individual's response thereof, these then bear "phala" (fruit). In the state where an individual realizes Self and reaches "jivanmukti" (moksha), Shankara, Mandana, Sarvajnatman and other Vedanta scholars suggest that the causes of impressions such as ignorance disappear, the individual reaches inner resolution and complete acceptance of self, thus becoming free of samskaras and consequent blissful state of existence.


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: In Nyaya school of Hinduism, "Bhavana" (Sanskrit: भावना) is synonymous with "Samskara", a property that manifests as impressions or traces on the soul. It is a key concept in Nyaya philosophy, and it applies the idea to both living and non-living world. For example, the "vega" (velocity) of "vayu" (wind) is its samskara, in Nyaya literature. The concept is intimately related to Nyaya's search and reason-driven explanation of causes behind what happens in living and non-living world, and why. All voluntary actions, state Nyayayikas, have a cause, and these are guided by Samskara. For example, a newborn child voluntarily and instinctively acts to reach for the mother's breast. This action, explain Nyaya texts, must have a cause, but the newborn has neither been provided that knowledge nor has the value of the mother's breast been explained by another, nor has the newborn formed any Samskara in the new life. The newborn has that knowledge, that instinct, from some impression, some trace within "from a prior experience". That is an example of "Samskara", assert the Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika scholars.


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: In Nyaya school of Hinduism, the existence of Samskara cannot be directly perceived, only inferred. Further, not all Samskara are psychological. Some simply manifest as memories, premises or beliefs shaped "from a prior experience".


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: Saṃskāra or Saṅkhāra in Buddhism refers to mental "dispositions". These result from past volitions, and are causes of future volitions. "Saṅkhāra" also refers to that faculty within a person wherein these dispositions are formed. Buddhism emphasizes the need to purify dispositions ("Saṅkhāra") rather than eliminate them.


title: Samskara (Indian philosophy)

text: The activities of mind, speech and body, according to Jain philosophy, lead to Asrava, that is, the influx and imprint of karmic residues to the "jiva" (soul) of the living being. These residues bind ("bandha"), forming "karma sarira", which can be stopped ("saṃvara") and released ("nirjara"). The operating mechanism, consistent with the dualism premise of Jainism, is not Saṃskāra as latent mental trace, rather "karma bandha" to the soul. The rituals and rites of passage, called Samskara in Jainism, are part of the "saṃvara" and "nirjara" initiation process, in order to free the soul from the crust of karmic residues.


title: Magnox

text: Magnox is a type of nuclear power/production reactor that was designed to run on natural uranium with graphite as the moderator and carbon dioxide gas as the heat exchange coolant. It belongs to the wider class of gas-cooled reactors. The name comes from the magnesium-aluminium alloy used to clad the fuel rods inside the reactor. Like most other "Generation I nuclear reactors", the Magnox was designed with the dual purpose of producing electrical power and plutonium-239 for the nascent nuclear weapons programme in Britain. The name refers specifically to the United Kingdom design but is sometimes used generically to refer to any similar reactor.


title: Magnox

text: As with other plutonium-producing reactors, conserving neutrons is a key element of the design. In magnox, the neutrons are moderated in large blocks of graphite. The efficiency of graphite as a moderator allows the Magnox to run using natural uranium fuel, in contrast with the more common commercial light-water reactor which requires slightly enriched uranium. Graphite oxidizes readily in air, so the core is cooled with CO, which is then pumped into a heat exchanger to generate steam to drive conventional steam turbine equipment for power production. The core is open on one end, so fuel elements can be added or removed while the reactor is still running.


title: Magnox

text: The "dual use" capability of the Magnox design led to the UK building up a large stockpile of fuel grade/"reactor grade" plutonium, with the aid of the B205 reprocessing facility. The low-to-interim burnup feature of the reactor design would become responsible for changes to US regulatory classifications after the US–UK "Reactor-grade" plutonium detonation test of the 1960s. Despite improvements to the design in later decades as electricity generation became the primary operational aim, magnox reactors were never capable of competing with the higher efficiency and higher fuel "burnup" of pressurized water reactors.


title: Magnox

text: In total, only a few dozen reactors of this type were constructed, most of them in the UK from the 1950s to the 1970s, with very few exported to other countries. The first magnox reactor to come online was Calder Hall (at the Sellafield site) in 1956, frequently regarded as the "first commercial-scale electricity producing reactor in the world", while the last in Britain to shut down was Reactor 1 in Wylfa (on Ynys Môn) in 2015. , North Korea remains the only operator to continue using Magnox style reactors, at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center. The Magnox design was superseded by the Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor, which is similarly cooled but includes changes to improve its economic performance.


title: Magnox

text: The UK's first full-scale nuclear reactor was the Windscale Pile in Sellafield. The pile was designed for the production of plutonium-239 which was bred in multi-week reactions taking place in natural uranium fuel. Under normal conditions, natural uranium is not sensitive enough to its own neutrons to maintain a chain reaction. To improve the fuel's sensitivity to neutrons, a neutron moderator is used, in this case highly purified graphite.


title: Magnox

text: The reactors consisted of a huge cube of this material (the "pile") made up of many smaller blocks and drilled through horizontally to make a large number of "fuel channels". Uranium fuel was placed in aluminium canisters and pushed into the channels in the front, pushing previous fuel canisters through the channel and out the back of the reactor where they fell into a pool of water. The system was designed to work at low temperatures and power levels and was air-cooled with the help of large fans.


title: Magnox

text: Graphite is flammable and presents a serious safety risk. This was demonstrated on 10 October 1957 when Unit 1 of the now two-unit site caught fire. The reactor burned for three days, and massive contamination was only avoided due to the addition of filtering systems that had previously been derided as unnecessary "follies".


title: Magnox

text: As the UK nuclear establishment began to turn its attention to nuclear power, the need for more plutonium for weapons development remained acute. This led to an effort to adapt the basic Windscale design to a power-producing version that would also produce plutonium. In order to be economically useful the plant would have to run at much higher power levels, and in order to efficiently convert that power to electricity, it would have to run at higher temperatures.


title: Magnox

text: At these power levels, the fire risk is amplified and air cooling is no longer appropriate. In the case of the Magnox design, this led to the use of carbon dioxide (CO) as the coolant. There is no facility in the reactor to adjust the gas flow through the individual channels whilst at power, but gas flow was adjusted by using flow gags attached to the support strut which located into the diagrid. These gags were used to increase flow in the centre of the core and to reduce it at the periphery. Principal control over the reaction rate was provided by a number (48 at Chapelcross and Calder Hall) boron-steel control rods which could be raised and lowered as required in vertical channels.


title: Magnox

text: At higher temperatures, aluminium is no longer structurally sound, which led to the development of the magnox alloy fuel cladding. Unfortunately, magnox is increasingly reactive with increasing temperature, and the use of this material limited the operational gas temperatures to , much lower than desirable for efficient steam generation. This limit also meant that the reactors had to be very large in order to generate any given power level, which was further amplified by the use of gas for cooling, as the low thermal capacity of the fluid required very high flow rates.


title: Magnox

text: The magnox fuel elements consisted of refined uranium enclosed in a loose-fitting magnox shell and then pressurized with helium. The outside of the shell was typically finned in order to improve heat exchange with the CO. Magnox alloy is reactive with water, which means it cannot be left in a cooling pond after extraction from the reactor for extended periods. In contrast to the Windscale layout, the Magnox design used vertical fuel channels. This required the fuel shells to lock together end-to-end, or to sit one on top the other to allow them to be pulled out of the channels from the top.


title: Magnox

text: Like the Windscale designs, the later Magnox reactors allowed access to the fuel channels and could be refuelled while operating. This was a key criterion for the design because its use of natural uranium leads to low burnup ratios and the requirement for frequent refuelling. For power use, the fuel canisters were left in the reactor as long as possible, while for plutonium production they were removed earlier. The complicated refuelling equipment proved to be less reliable than the reactor systems, and perhaps not advantageous overall.


title: Magnox

text: The entire reactor assembly was placed in a large pressure vessel. Due to the size of the pile, only the reactor core itself was placed within the steel pressure assembly, which was then surrounded by a concrete confinement building (or "biological shield"). As there was no water in the core, and thus no possibility of a steam explosion, the building was able to tightly wrap the pressure vessel, which helped reduce construction costs. In order to keep the size of the confinement building down, the early Magnox designs placed the heat exchanger for the CO gas outside the dome, connected through piping. Although there were strengths with this approach in that maintenance and access was generally more straightforward, the major weakness was the radiation 'shine' emitted particularly from the unshielded top duct.


title: Magnox

text: The Magnox design was an evolution and never truly finalised, and later units differ considerably from earlier ones. As neutron fluxes increased in order to improve power densities problems with neutron embrittlement were encountered, particularly at low temperatures. Later units at Oldbury and Wylfa replaced the steel pressure vessels with prestressed concrete versions which also contained the heat exchangers and steam plant. Working pressure varies from 6.9 to 19.35bar for the steel vessels, and 24.8 and 27bar for the two concrete designs.


title: Magnox

text: No British construction company at the time was large enough to build all the power stations, so various competing consortiums were involved, adding to the differences between the stations; for example, nearly every power station used a different design of Magnox fuel element. Most of the Magnox builds suffered time overruns and cost escalation.


title: Magnox

text: For the initial start up of the reactor neutron sources were located within the core to provide sufficient neutrons to initiate the nuclear reaction. Other aspects of the design included the use of flux shaping or flattening bars or controls rods to even out (to some extent) the neutron flux density across the core. If not used, the flux in the centre would be very high relative to the outer areas leading to excessive central temperatures and lower power output limited by the temperature of the central areas. Each fuel channel would have several elements stacked one upon another to form a "stringer". This required the presence of a latching mechanism to allow the stack to be withdrawn and handled. This caused some problems as the Nimonic springs used contained cobalt, which became irradiated giving high gamma level when removed from the reactor. Additionally, thermocouples were attached to some elements and needed to be removed on fuel discharge from the reactor.


title: Magnox

text: The "dual use" nature of the Magnox design leads to design compromises that limit its economic performance. As the Magnox design was being rolled out, work was already underway on the Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor (AGR) with the explicit intention of making the system more economical. Primary among the changes was the decision to run the reactor at much higher temperatures, about , which would greatly improve the efficiency when running the power-extracting steam turbines. This was too hot for the magnox alloy, and the AGR originally intended to use a new beryllium-based cladding, but this proved too brittle. This was replaced by a stainless steel cladding, but this absorbed enough neutrons to affect criticality, and in turn required the design to operate on slightly enriched uranium rather than the Magnox's natural uranium, driving up fuel costs. Ultimately the economics of the system proved little better than Magnox. Former Treasury Economic Advisor, David Henderson, described the AGR programme as one of the two most costly British government-sponsored project errors, alongside Concorde.


title: Magnox

text: The first Magnox reactors at Calder Hall were designed principally to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. The production of plutonium from uranium by irradiation in a pile generates large quantities of heat which must be disposed of, and so generating steam from this heat, which could be used in a turbine to generate electricity, or as process heat in the nearby Windscale works, was seen as a kind of "free" by-product of an essential process.


title: Magnox

text: The British government decided in 1957 that electricity generation by nuclear power would be promoted, and that there would be a building programme to achieve 5,000 to 6,000MWe capacity by 1965, a quarter of UK's generating needs. Although Sir John Cockcroft had advised the government that electricity generated by nuclear power would be more expensive than that from coal, the government decided that nuclear power stations as alternatives to coal-fired power stations would be useful to reduce the bargaining power of the coal miners' unions, and so decided to go ahead. In 1960 a government white paper scaled back the building programme to 3,000MWe, acknowledging that coal generation was 25% cheaper. A government statement to the House of Commons in 1963 stated that nuclear generation was more than twice as expensive as coal. The "plutonium credit" which assigned a value to the plutonium produced was used to improve the economic case, although the operators of the power stations were never paid this credit.


title: Magnox

text: Once removed from the reactor, the used fuel elements are stored in cooling ponds (with the exception of Wylfa which has dry stores in a carbon dioxide atmosphere) where the decay heat is transferred to the pond water, and then removed by the pond water circulation, cooling and filtration system. The fact that fuel elements can only be stored for a limited period in water before the Magnox cladding deteriorates, and must therefore inevitably be reprocessed, added to the costs of the Magnox programme.


title: Magnox

text: Later reviews criticised the continuing development project by project instead of standardisation on the most economical design, and for persisting with the development of a reactor which achieved only two export orders.


title: Magnox

text: A retrospective evaluation of costs, using a low 5% discount rate on capital, estimated Magnox electricity costs were nearly 50% higher than coal power stations would have provided.


title: Magnox

text: The Magnox reactors were considered at the time to have a considerable degree of inherent safety because of their simple design, low power density, and gas coolant. Because of this they were not provided with secondary containment features. A safety design principle at the time was that of the "maximum credible accident", and the assumption was made that if the plant were designed to withstand that, then all other lesser but similar events would be encompassed. Loss of coolant accidents (at least those considered in the design) would not cause large-scale fuel failure as the Magnox cladding would retain the bulk of the radioactive material, assuming the reactor was rapidly shutdown (a SCRAM), because the decay heat could be removed by natural circulation of air. As the coolant is already a gas, explosive pressure buildup from boiling is not a risk, as happened in the catastrophic steam explosion at the Chernobyl accident. Failure of the reactor shutdown system to rapidly shut down the reactor, or failure of natural circulation, was not considered in the design. In 1967 Chapelcross experienced a fuel melt due to restricted gas flow in an individual channel and, although this was dealt with by the station crew without major incident, this event had not been designed or planned for, and the radioactivity released was greater than anticipated during the station design.


title: Magnox

text: Despite the belief in their inherently safe design, it was decided that the Magnox stations would not be built in heavily populated areas. The positioning constraint decided upon was that any 10-degree sector would have a population less than 500 within , 10,000 within and 100,000 within . In addition population around the site in all directions would be less than six times the 10-degree limits. Planning permission constraints would be used to prevent any large growth of population within five miles.


title: Magnox

text: In the older steel pressure vessel design, boilers and gas ducting are outside the concrete biological shield. Consequently, this design emits a significant amount of direct gamma and neutron radiation, termed direct "shine", from the reactors. For example, the most exposed members of the public living near Dungeness Magnox reactor in 2002 received 0.56mSv, over half the International Commission on Radiological Protection recommended maximum radiation dose limit for the public, from direct "shine" alone. The doses from the Oldbury and Wylfa reactors, which have concrete pressure vessels which encapsulate the complete gas circuit, are much lower.


title: Magnox

text: In all, 11 power stations totalling 26 units were built in the United Kingdom where the design originated. In addition, one was exported to Tōkai in Japan and another to Latina in Italy. North Korea also developed their own Magnox reactors, based on the UK design which was made public at an Atoms for Peace conference.


title: Magnox

text: The first Magnox power station, Calder Hall, was the world's first nuclear power station to generate electrical power on an industrial scale (a power station in Obninsk, Russia started supplying the grid in very small non-commercial quantities on 1 December 1954). The first connection to the grid was on 27 August 1956, and the plant was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 17 October 1956. When the station closed on 31 March 2003, the first reactor had been in use for nearly 47 years.


title: Magnox

text: The first two stations (Calder Hall and Chapelcross) were originally owned by the UKAEA and primarily used in their early life to produce weapons-grade plutonium, with two fuel loads per year. From 1964 they were mainly used on commercial fuel cycles and in April 1995 the UK Government announced that all production of plutonium for weapons purposes had ceased.


title: Magnox

text: The later and larger units were owned by the CEGB and operated on commercial fuel cycles. However Hinkley Point A and two other stations were modified so that weapons-grade plutonium could be extracted for military purposes should the need arise.


title: Magnox

text: In early operation it was found that there was significant oxidation of mild steel components by the high temperature carbon dioxide coolant, requiring a reduction in operating temperature and power output. For example, the Latina reactor was derated in 1969 by 24%, from 210MWe to 160MWe, by the reduction of operating temperature from .


title: Magnox

text: The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) announced on 30 December 2015 that Wylfa Unit 1 – the world's last operating Magnox reactor – was closed. The unit had generated electricity for five years longer than originally planned. Two units at Wylfa were both scheduled to shut down at the end of 2012, but the NDA decided to shut down Unit 2 in April 2012 so that Unit 1 could continue operating in order to fully utilize existing stocks of fuel, which was no longer being manufactured.


title: Magnox

text: The small 5MWe experimental reactor, based on the Magnox design, at Yongbyon in North Korea, continues to operate .


title: Magnox

text: Magnox is also the name of an alloy—mainly of magnesium with small amounts of aluminium and other metals—used in cladding unenriched uranium metal fuel with a non-oxidising covering to contain fission products.


title: Magnox

text: This material has the advantage of a low neutron capture cross-section, but has two major disadvantages:


title: Magnox

text: Magnox fuel incorporated cooling fins to provide maximum heat transfer despite low operating temperatures, making it expensive to produce. While the use of uranium metal rather than oxide made reprocessing more straightforward and therefore cheaper, the need to reprocess fuel a short time after removal from the reactor meant that the fission product hazard was severe. Expensive remote handling facilities were required to address this danger.


title: Magnox

text: The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is responsible for the decommissioning of the UK Magnox power plants, at an estimated cost of £12.6billion. There has been debate about whether a 25 or 100-year decommissioning strategy should be adopted. After 80years short-lifetime radioactive material in the defuelled core would have decayed to the point that human access to the reactor structure would be possible, easing dismantling work. A shorter decommissioning strategy would require a robotic core dismantling technique. The current approximately 100-year decommissioning plan is called Safestore. A 130-year Deferred Safestore Strategy was also considered, with an estimated cost saving of £1.4 billion, but not selected.


title: Magnox

text: In addition the Sellafield site which, amongst other activities, reprocessed spent Magnox fuel, has an estimated decommissioning cost of £31.5billion. Magnox fuel was produced at Springfields near Preston; estimated decommissioning cost is £371million. The total cost of decommissioning Magnox activities is likely to exceed £20billion, averaging about £2billion per productive reactor site.


title: Magnox

text: Calder Hall was opened in 1956 as the world's first commercial nuclear power station, and is a significant part of the UK's industrial heritage. The NDA is considering whether to preserve Calder Hall Reactor 1 as a museum site.


title: Magnox

text: All the UK's Magnox reactor sites (apart from Calder Hall) are operated by Magnox Ltd, a subsidiary of the NDA.


title: Magnox

text: Reactor Sites Management Company (RSMC), a NDA Site Licence Company (SLC), originally held the contract to manage Magnox Ltd on behalf of the NDA. In 2007, RSMC was acquired by American nuclear fuel cycle service provider EnergySolutions from British Nuclear Fuels.


title: Magnox

text: On 1 October 2008, Magnox Electric Ltd separated into two nuclear licensed companies, Magnox North Ltd and Magnox South Ltd.


title: Magnox

text: In January 2011 Magnox North Ltd and Magnox South Ltd recombined as Magnox Ltd. Following procurement and management issues with the contract, Magnox Ltd will become a subsidiary of the NDA in September 2019.


title: Meet the Browns (TV series)

text: Meet the Browns is an American sitcom created and produced by Tyler Perry. The Initial story of show revolves around Mr. Brown running a senior citizen's home in Decatur, Georgia, with his daughter Cora Simmons, but as the show progresses, this idea is gradually phased out and it becomes a typical family sitcom about a multigenerational clan living under one roof. The show premiered on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 ,and finished its run-on November 18, 2011 on TBS.


title: Meet the Browns (TV series)

text: It is an adaptation of Perry’s play and film of the same name. The show stars David Mann and Tamela Mann, who starred in the stage play and motion picture. It is also a spin-off of "Tyler Perry's House of Payne".


title: Meet the Browns (TV series)

text: As season 2 began, Brianne Gould, who played Brianna, was removed from the series for undisclosed reasons. She was replaced by Logan Browning.


title: Meet the Browns (TV series)

text: In the series, Eddie Walker, one of Will's former friends, who was close to molesting Joaquin, became the first on-screen character to die. He suffered stab wounds, and the surgery done to try to save his life was performed by Will himself. Also, in season 4, Brianna's friend Antonio is killed in a car crash involving texting while driving.


title: Meet the Browns (TV series)

text: Mabel "Madea" Simmons, a recurring character in many of Tyler Perry's works, is an unseen character in this series though mshe is entioned many times. Throughout the show's five seasons, she never made an on-camera appearance.


title: Meet the Browns (TV series)

text: Other unseen characters include Brown's brother and sister-in-law, LB, and Sarah. Both appeared in the stage play and film adaptation of "Meet the Browns," but they've never graced the series. However, LB was mentioned once in the backdoor pilot episode which aired as an episode of "House of Payne".


title: Meet the Browns (TV series)

text: In November 2011, TBS suddenly announced that the series finale would be airing sinhad beenit was cancOn November 18, 2011, the last two episodes aired, ending the series after 140 episodes total.


title: Meet the Browns (TV series)

text: In February 2020, it was announced that David Mann and Tamela Mann would be reprising their roles in a sequel series titled "Tyler Perry's Assisted Living" which premiered September 2, 2020, on BET. "Assisted Livlivi"takes place years after the events of "Meet the Browns". Brown and Cora act as investors for another retirement home, owned by a family whothat begs to Brown’s church.


title: Meet the Browns (TV series)

text: The show revolves around the misadventures of the multi-generational Brown family. They live in suburban Atlanta, Georgia. All main cast members are credited only for the episodes in which they appear.


title: Meet the Browns (TV series)

text: Lionsgate Home Entertainment has released all five seasons on DVD in Region 1. But these are arranged differently than the TV broadcast in which the DVD releases make up seven seasons with twenty episodes each.


title: Meet the Browns (TV series)

text: When the series premiered on January 7, 2009, it received a viewership of 4,027,000 based on Nielsen ratings. Meet the Browns was TBS's #1 sitcom in March 2010, with 2.3 million viewers and 1.2 million adults 18-49. In October 2010, the show continued to be TBS's #1 and #2 sitcom telecasts, with an audience of 1.2 to 1.4 million adults 18–49.


title: Meet the Browns (TV series)

text: "Meet the Browns" began airing in off-network syndication in September 2010 on stations covering more than 70% of the U.S., with major station groups carrying the program including Fox Television Stations, Tribune Broadcasting, Weigel Broadcasting, CBS Television Stations, Capitol Broadcasting Company, Cox Media Group, Meredith Corporation, Granite Broadcasting, Belo Broadcasting. and CW Plus, Reruns are primarily aired on affiliates of MyNetworkTV and The CW (the latter network's CW Plus service also carries the program as part of its national schedule). BET began airing reruns of the series in October 2016.


title: Clay Helton

text: Clay Charles Helton (born June 24, 1972) is an American college football coach and former player, who is currently the head coach at Georgia Southern. He was previously the head coach of USC from 2015 to 2021. Helton has also been an assistant coach for Duke, Houston and Memphis. His father, Kim Helton, was a coach in college, the National Football League, and the Canadian Football League.


title: Clay Helton

text: Helton was born on June 24, 1972, in Gainesville, Florida, where his father Kim Helton, was a graduate assistant for the Florida Gators football team. The Helton family later lived in the Miami, Tampa Bay, and Houston areas, as Kim Helton later coached for the University of Miami, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Houston Oilers. Clay Helton attended Clements High School in Sugar Land, Texas and graduated in 1990.


title: Clay Helton

text: After redshirting his freshman year, Helton played college football at Auburn as quarterback. In 1993, Helton transferred to Houston, after his father was hired as head coach there. Helton was a backup quarterback at both Auburn and Houston and graduated from Houston in 1994 with a degree in mathematics and interdisciplinary science. At Houston, Helton completed 47 of 87 passes for 420 yards, one touchdown, and four interceptions and played 16 games.


title: Clay Helton

text: In 1995, Helton enrolled at Duke University and became a graduate assistant for the Duke Blue Devils football team under Fred Goldsmith. Helton later was promoted as running backs coach in 1996.


title: Clay Helton

text: Helton joined his father at Houston to be running backs coach in 1997 and remained in that position until 1999, Kim Helton's final season as head coach.


title: Clay Helton

text: After leaving Houston, Helton joined Rip Scherer's staff at Memphis also as running backs coach. Helton stayed on staff under new coach Tommy West, who replaced Scherer in 2001, and moved to coaching the wide receivers in 2003. By 2007, Helton was promoted to offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. Players Helton coached at Memphis include DeAngelo Williams, a first-round NFL draft pick in 2005, and 2006 Conference USA All-Freshman pick Duke Calhoun.


title: Clay Helton

text: Helton was hired by USC to be quarterbacks coach in 2010 under Lane Kiffin. In 2013, he was promoted to offensive coordinator. Helton served as the team's interim head coach during their bowl game after their previous interim head coach, Ed Orgeron, resigned following the hiring of Steve Sarkisian. On October 11, 2015, he once again became the interim head coach of the Trojans after head coach Steve Sarkisian took a leave of absence, and was then subsequently fired. On November 30, 2015, USC removed the interim tag and formally named Helton the 23rd head coach in school history. After Helton was named the permanent head coach, USC lost its final two games of the 2015 season to Stanford in the Pac-12 championship game and Wisconsin in the Holiday Bowl. In Helton's first full season as head coach, USC started off 1–3 with losses to Alabama, Stanford, and Utah, but then won its final eight games of the 2016 regular season as well as the Rose Bowl against Penn State to end the season with a record of 10–3 and third place in the AP poll.


title: Clay Helton

text: In Helton's last full season as head coach, the season was shortened due to the COVID-19 pandemic. USC ended with a 5–1 record, with the only loss to Oregon in the Pac-12 championship game.


title: Clay Helton

text: On September 13, 2021, Helton was relieved of his duties at USC after a loss to Stanford. His buyout was in the $12 million range. Including two stints as the interim head coach, Helton's record was 46-24 as the Trojans' coach, including a Rose Bowl win to cap the 2016 season. USC went 1-1 under Helton in the 2021–22 season.


title: Clay Helton

text: On November 2, 2021, Helton was announced as the 11th head coach for Georgia Southern, replacing interim head coach Kevin Whitley.


title: Croft (land)

text: A croft is a fenced or enclosed area of land, usually small and arable, and usually, but not always, with a crofter's dwelling thereon. A crofter is one who has tenure and use of the land, typically as a tenant farmer, especially in rural areas.


title: Croft (land)

text: The word "croft" is West Germanic in etymology and is now most familiar in Scotland, most crofts being in the Highlands and Islands area. Elsewhere the expression is generally archaic. In Scottish Gaelic, it is rendered (, plural ).


title: Croft (land)

text: The Scottish croft is a small agricultural landholding of a type that has been subject to special legislation applying to the Scottish Highlands since 1886. The legislation was largely a response to the complaints and demands of tenant families who were victims of the Highland Clearances. The modern crofters or tenants appear very little in evidence before the beginning of the 18th century. They were tenants at will underneath the tacksman and wadsetters, but practically their tenure was secure enough. The first evidence that can be found of small tenants holding directly of the proprietor is in a rental of the estates of Sir D. MacDonald in Skye and North Uist in 1715.


title: Croft (land)

text: The first planned crofting townships in the Outer Hebrides were Barragloum and Kirkibost (Great Bernera) which were laid out into 32 large "lots" of between 14 and 30 acres in the uniform rectangular pattern that would become very familiar in later decades. This work was carried out in 1805 by James Chapman for the Earl of Seaforth.


title: Croft (land)

text: The first edition of the Ordnance Survey in 1850 clearly highlights the division of this land and the turf and stone boundaries built by the first tenants in 1805 are still in use today as croft boundaries. Kirkibost was 'cleared' of its tenants in 1823 and the 1850 mapping clearly shows roofless ruins on each parcel of land. The township was however re-settled in 1878 following the Bernera Riot four years earlier using exactly the same division boundaries set out in 1805.


title: Croft (land)

text: The Parliament of the United Kingdom created the Crofters' Act 1886, after the Highland Land League had gained seats in that parliament. The government was then Liberal, with William Ewart Gladstone as Prime minister. Another Crofters' Act was created in 1993 (the Crofters' (Scotland) Act 1993). The earlier Act established the first Crofting Commission, but its responsibilities were quite different from those of the newer Crofters Commission created in 1955. The Commission is based in Inverness.


title: Croft (land)

text: Crofts held subject to the provisions of the Crofters' Acts are in the administrative counties of Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, Sutherland, Ross-shire, Inverness-shire and Argyll, in the north and west of Scotland. Under the 1886 legislation (the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act) protected crofters are members of a crofters' township, consisting of tenants of neighbouring crofts with a shared right to use common pasture. Since 1976 it has been legally possible for a crofter to acquire title to his croft, thus becoming an owner-occupier.


title: Boston City Hall

text: Boston City Hall is the seat of city government of Boston, Massachusetts. It includes the offices of the mayor of Boston and the Boston City Council. The current hall was built in 1968 to assume the functions of the Old City Hall.


title: Boston City Hall

text: It is a controversial and prominent example of Brutalist architecture, part of the modernist movement. It was designed by the architecture firms Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles and Campbell, Aldrich & Nulty, with LeMessurier Consultants as engineers.


title: Boston City Hall

text: Together with the surrounding plaza, City Hall is part of the Government Center complex. This project constituted a major urban redesign effort in the 1960s, as Boston demolished an area of substandard housing and businesses.


title: Boston City Hall

text: The building has been subject to widespread public condemnation, and is sometimes called one of the world's ugliest buildings. Calls for the structure to be demolished have been regularly made even before construction was finished. Architects and critics considered it to be excellent work, with one poll finding that professional architects describe Boston City Hall as one of the ten proudest achievements of American architecture.


title: Boston City Hall

text: Boston City Hall was designed by Gerhard Kallmann, a Columbia University professor, and Michael McKinnell, a Columbia graduate student, (who co-founded Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles). In 1962 they won an international, two-stage design competition for the building. Their design, selected from 256 entries by a jury of prominent architects and businessmen, departed from the more conventional designs of most of the other entries (typified by pure geometrical forms clad with sleek curtain walls) to introduce an articulated structure that expressed the internal functions of the buildings in rugged, cantilevered concrete forms. While hovering over the broad brick plaza, the City Hall was designed to create an open and accessible place for the city's government, with the most heavily used public activities all located on the lower levels directly connected to the plaza. The major civic spaces, including the Council chamber, library, and Mayor's office, were one level up, and the administrative offices were housed above these, behind the repetitive brackets of the top floors.


title: Boston City Hall

text: At a time when monumentality was typically considered an appropriate attribute for governmental architecture, the architects sought to create a bold statement of modern civic democracy, placed within the historic city of Boston. While the architects looked to precedents by Le Corbusier, especially the monastery of Sainte Marie de La Tourette, with its cantilevered upper floors, exposed concrete structure, and a similar interpretation of public and private spaces, they also drew from the example of Medieval and Renaissance Italian town halls and public spaces, as well as from the bold granite structures of 19th-century Boston (including Alexander Parris' Quincy Market immediately to the east).


title: Boston City Hall

text: Many of the elements in the design have been seen as abstractions of classical design elements, such as the coffers and the architrave above the concrete columns. Kallmann, McKinnell, and Knowles collaborated with two other Boston architectural firms and one engineering firm to form the "Architects and Engineers for the Boston City Hall" as the entity responsible for construction, which took place from 1963 to 1968.


title: Boston City Hall

text: The architects designed City Hall as divided into three sections, aesthetically and also by use. The lowest portion of the building, the brick-faced base, which is partially built into a hillside, consists of four levels of the departments of city government, where the public has wide access. The brick largely transfers over to the exterior of this section, and it is joined by materials such as quarry tile inside. The use of these terra cotta products relates to the building's location on one of the original slopes of Boston, expressed in the open, brick-paved plaza, and also to historic Boston's brick architecture, seen in the adjoining Sears Crescent block and the Blackstone Block buildings across Congress Street.


title: Boston City Hall

text: The intermediate portion of City Hall houses the public elected officials: the Mayor, the City Council members, and the Council Chamber. The large scale and the protrusion of these interior spaces on the outside, instead of being buried deep within the building, reveal the important public functions to the passers-by and are intended to create a visual and symbolic connection between the city and its government. The effect is of a small city of concrete-sheltered structures cantilevered above the plaza: large forms that house important civic activities. The cantilevers are supported by exterior columns, spaced alternately at and , which are steel-reinforced.


title: Boston City Hall

text: The upper stories contain the city's office space, which are used by civil servants not visited frequently by the public, such as the administrative and planning departments. The bureaucratic nature is reflected in the standardized window patterns, separated by pre-cast concrete fins, with an open office plan typical of modern office buildings. (The subsequent enclosure of much of this space into separate offices contributed to the ventilation problems of those floors.)


title: Boston City Hall

text: The top of the brick base was designed as an elevated courtyard melding the fourth floor of the city hall with the plaza. Security concerns caused city officials in recent years to block access to the courtyard and the outdoor stairways to Congress Street and the plaza. The courtyard is occasionally opened up for events (such as the celebration of the Boston Celtics championship in 1986). After the September 11 attacks in 2001, security was further increased. The north entrance, facing the plaza, was barricaded with jersey barriers and bicycle racks. All visitors entering the front and the back entrances must pass through metal detectors.


title: Boston City Hall

text: City Hall was constructed by using mainly cast-in-place and precast Portland cement concrete and some masonry. About half of the concrete used in the building was precast (roughly 22,000 separate components), and the other half was poured-in-place concrete. All of the concrete in the structure, except that of the columns, is mixed with a light, coarse rock. While the majority of the building is created using concrete, precast and poured-in-place concrete are distinguishable by their different colors and textures. For example, cast-in-place elements are coarse and grainy textured because the concrete was poured into fir wood frames to mold it, and precast elements, such as trusses and supports, were set in steel molds to gain smooth, clean surfaces. This distinction also originates from the different types of cement used: the exterior poured-in-place pieces are of type I cement, a lightly colored cement, while the exterior precast components use type II cement, a dark-colored cement. The base of the building is dark with brick, Welsh quarry tiles, mahogany walls, and darker concrete. As the building ascends, the overall color lightens, as lighter concrete is used.


title: Boston City Hall

text: The public response to Boston City Hall continues to be sharply divided. Arguments for and against continued use of the structure provoke strong counter-arguments from politicians, local press, design professionals, and the general public. City Hall was given two stars by the Michelin Green Guide, which said that the building "has been one of Boston's controversial architectural statements since its completion in 1968." The building's 50th anniversary in 2019 prompted both positive and negative commentary. In the 2021 Boston mayoral election, candidates for mayor Andrea Campbell, John Barros, and Kim Janey voiced negative opinions on it, Annissa Essaibi George was neutral on it, while Michelle Wu voiced positive opinions on it.


title: Boston City Hall

text: While assessment of the building's architecture has been influenced by the vagaries of changing architectural style, the building at the time was acclaimed by some architects as well as by the professional association, American Institute of Architects, which gave the building its Honor Award in 1969.


title: Boston City Hall

text: Representative of the contemporary praise was the opinion of "The New York Times" critic Ada Louise Huxtable, who wrote that "in this focal building Boston sought, and got, excellence." Historian Walter Muir Whitehill wrote that


title: Boston City Hall

text: "it is as fine a building for its time and place as Boston has ever produced. Traditionalists who long for a revival of Bulfinch simply do not realize that one does not achieve a handsome monster either by enlarging, or endlessly multiplying, the attractive elements of smaller structures."


title: Boston City Hall

text: Architect, educator, and writer Donlyn Lyndon wrote in "The Boston Globe", "Boston City Hall carries an authority that results from the clarity, articulation, and intensity of imagination with which it has been formed." Architectural historian Douglass Shand-Tucci, author of "Built in Boston: City and Suburb, 1800–2000", called City Hall "one of America's foremost landmarks" and "arguably the great building of twentieth-century Boston." In the "AIA Guide to Boston", Susan and Michael Southworth wrote that "the award-winning City Hall had established its architect's reputation and inspired similar buildings across the nation."


title: Boston City Hall

text: Stylistically, City Hall is considered by some to be a leading example of Brutalist architecture. It is listed among the "Greatest Buildings" by Great Buildings Online, an affiliate of "Architecture Week". Additionally, in a 1976 Bicentennial poll of historians and architects regarding the United States' greatest buildings, sponsored by the American Institute of Architects, Boston City Hall received the sixth-most mentions.


title: Boston City Hall

text: When Boston's Mayor Menino stirred controversy in 2010 with a discussion of selling City Hall (see below), opponents of the proposal expressed praise of the building for its influence, design originality, and symbolism as a marker of Boston's rebirth in the 1960s. Supporters of the building applied to the Boston Landmarks Commission for its designation as a landmark, with supporting signatures and letters from architecture critic Jane Holtz Kay, Friends of the Public Garden President Henry Lee, and others. "The Boston Globe" published editorials recognizing the building's importance. Architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote an article published in "The Wall Street Journal" in which she contrasted the poor treatment of Boston City Hall with Yale University's recent sympathetic restoration of its similarly challenging Brutalist landmark, the Art and Architecture Building by architect Paul Rudolph. In 2009 a major exhibition of the original design drawings for City Hall, now part of the archive of Historic New England, was mounted at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. In 2015, Boston Globe columnist Dante Ramos wrote that "if we see the enduring value in Heroic-era architecture, we can also hope for a measure of boldness — and recognize the downside of being too timid." A 2019 essay by Anthony Flint argued that City Hall is "an elegant, successful work of architecture." In 2019, a commemorative pin was produced in honor of the building's 50th anniversary. In an essay written during the anniversary year, architect Aaron Betsky wrote that City Hall "is one of the last concrete examples of government willing to fight for what it thinks is right, which is, or should be, or common good."


title: Boston City Hall

text: Popular news media considers City Hall the "world's ugliest building", including the "Boston Globe" and the "Telegraph".


title: Boston City Hall

text: In the 1960s, Mayor John F. Collins reportedly gasped as the design was first unveiled, and someone in the room blurted out, "What the hell is that?" City Hall is very unpopular with some Bostonians, as it is with some employees of the building. In 2006 some described it as a dark and unfriendly eyesore. In part, such opinions are a reaction against greater Boston's numerous examples of concrete modernism from the 1960s.


title: Boston City Hall

text: The post-9/11 environment has dramatically changed what had been intended as a civil center and community space on the stairways and plaza around the building. Public access has been sharply reduced by the erection of security barriers and closing of numerous entrances.


title: Boston City Hall

text: In addition, the building's popularity declined as the tide turned away from modernism in New England to more traditional and post-modern styles in the 1970s and 1980s. The building was no longer new, architectural monumentality fell out of favor, and the idea of a "new" era and a "new" Boston became old-fashioned. The changes in style coincided with political changes, as Kevin White's mayoral administration ended.


title: Boston City Hall

text: Under subsequent administrations, which focused on neighborhoods rather than the center city, and decentralization instead of centralized civic power, funding was funneled away from City Hall. Compared to the Boston Public Library, some users and occupants have found City Hall to be unpleasant and dysfunctional. It has been the butt of jokes in some local magazines. The structure's complex interior spaces and sometimes-confusing floor plan have not been mitigated by quality wayfinding, signage, graphics or lighting.


title: Boston City Hall

text: A commentator wrote in 2006 that "I believe it's only a matter of time, and it will have to be totally removed, not modified, not retrofitted, not adapted." In 2008, the building was voted "World's Ugliest Building" in an online poll by the travel agency Virtualtourist. A number of news outlets picked up that moniker, and Mayor Tom Menino adopted it during his long tenure as a boon to tourism. A 2013 essay by columnist Paul McMorrow in the "Boston Globe" described it as "the worst building in the city" and advocated demolition. Curbed Boston included City Hall on its 2018 list of Boston's "10 ugliest buildings." A 2016 Boston Globe essay about "Boston flops, flubs, and failures" said City Hall was "cracking internally like a dead molar waiting to be pulled.


title: Boston City Hall

text: The surrounding City Hall Plaza has experienced a similar change in assessment over time. Although its recessed fountain, trees, and umbrella-shaded tables drew crowds in its early years, the space has more recently been cited as problematic in terms of design and urban planning. To illustrate the range of opinion regarding the Plaza, in 2004 the Project for Public Spaces identified it as the worst single public plaza worldwide out of hundreds of contenders, and it has placed the plaza on its "Hall of Shame." On the other hand, in 2009, The Cultural Landscape Foundation included City Hall Plaza as one of 13 national "Marvels of Modernism" in its exhibition and publication. Several rounds of efforts to liven up City Hall Plaza have yielded only minimal changes, with the challenge being, in part, the numerous approvals required at the city, state, and federal levels.


title: Boston City Hall

text: In 2001, some City Hall workers complained that they were suffering from sick building syndrome. However, consultants hired by the city "did not identify any building-wide or acute air-quality issues."


title: Boston City Hall

text: Since 2006, a number of proposals have been made to modify City Hall or to demolish it and replace it with a new building on another site.


title: Boston City Hall

text: On December 12, 2006, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino proposed selling the current city hall and adjacent plaza to private developers and moving the city government to a site in South Boston. Amid his plans, in April 2007, the Boston Landmarks Commission reviewed a petition to make the building a city landmark, supported by a group of architects and preservationists. On July 10, 2008, a Landmarks Commission official said that the petition to designate the building as a landmark had been accepted for study, giving the building pending landmark status. Members of the group Citizens for City Hall also opposed Mayor Menino's plan to build a new City Hall on the South Boston waterfront because it would be a major inconvenience for tens of thousands of city residents. In December 2008, Menino suspended his plan to move City Hall as the Great Recession set in, stating, "I can't consciously move ahead on a major project like this at this time."


title: Boston City Hall

text: An advocacy group, Friends of Boston City Hall, was established to help develop support for preserving and enhancing City Hall and improving the Plaza. In 2010, the Boston Society of Architects held a competition for ideas for modifying City Hall. In March 2011, plans were announced to rethink the building and its surrounding plaza.


title: Boston City Hall

text: While a candidate for Mayor of Boston, Martin J. Walsh called for the sale of City Hall for mixed-use redevelopment. But after his election, Walsh did not pursue such a sale. In 2015, the City of Boston launched a "Rethink City Hall" program to gather ideas for changes to the building and to City Hall Plaza. The Getty Foundation awarded Boston a grant of $120,000 in 2017 to study ways to preserve and enhance City Hall and its plaza. The Foundation noted "a shift in public sentiment" in recent years, "with many residents now embracing the site as a key feature of the city fabric." Suffolk University professor Harry Bartnick proposed that the building should be enclosed in a variegated glass sheath to make it more welcoming, less intimidating, and improve its energy efficiency. In August 2015, a developer's donations for a kitchen renovation was criticized by a fiscal watchdog.


title: Boston City Hall

text: In January 2016, Mayor Walsh announced plans to install new LED lighting on the exterior of the building. "We are committed to creating a welcoming, lively City Hall Plaza," Walsh said. The lights were turned on in October 2016. A more extensive set of renovations, designed by the Boston firm Utile, was completed in 2018. The renovations included new security and seating areas in the lobby, a coffee kiosk, new lighting, and new signage.


title: Boston City Hall

text: City Hall is located in Government Center, in Downtown Boston. The adjoining City Hall Plaza is sometimes used for parades and rallies and, most memorably, the region's championship sports teams, the Boston Celtics, Boston Bruins, New England Patriots, and the Boston Red Sox, have been feted in front of City Hall. A huge crowd in the plaza also greeted Queen Elizabeth II during her 1976 Bicentennial visit, as she walked from the Old State House to City Hall to have lunch with the Mayor.


title: Boston City Hall

text: Since November 2016, the plaza has been home to Boston Winter, a holiday-themed shopping center, complete with a skating rink and other holiday events, held annually from November to January.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: In psychology, desensitization is a treatment or process that diminishes emotional responsiveness to a negative, aversive or positive stimulus after repeated exposure to it. Desensitization also occurs when an emotional response is repeatedly evoked in situations in which the action tendency that is associated with the emotion proves irrelevant or unnecessary. The process of desensitization was developed by psychologist Mary Cover Jones, and is primarily used to assist individuals in unlearning phobias and anxieties. Joseph Wolpe (1958) developed a method of a hierarchal list of anxiety evoking stimuli in order of intensity, which allows individuals to undergo adaption. Although medication is available for individuals with anxiety, fear or phobias, empirical evidence supports desensitization with high rates of cure, particularly in clients with depression or schizophrenia.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: The hierarchical list is constructed between client and therapist in rank ordered series of steps from the least disturbing to the most disturbing fears or phobias. Secondly the client is taught techniques that produce deep relaxation. It is impossible to feel both anxiety and relaxation at the same time, so easing the client into deep relaxation helps inhibit any feelings of anxiety. Systematic desensitization (a guided reduction in fear, anxiety or aversion) can then be achieved by gradually approaching the feared stimulus while maintaining relaxation. Desensitization works best when individuals are directly exposed to the stimuli and situations they fear so anxiety-evoking stimuli are paired with inhibitory responses. This is carried out either by clients performing in real life situations (known as vivo desensitization), or, if it is not practical to directly act out the steps of hierarchy, by clients observing models performing the feared behaviour (known as vicarious desensitization). Clients slowly move up the hierarchy, repeating performances if necessary, until the last item on the list is performed without fear or anxiety.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: The theory that "two opposing states cannot occur simultaneously" i.e. relaxation methods that are involved with desensitization inhibit feelings of anxiety that come with being exposed to phobic stimuli.  Deep muscle relaxation techniques are the primary method used by Wolpe in order to increase parasympathetic nervous system activity, the nervous system the body uses to relax.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: One criticism is that reciprocal inhibition isn't a necessary part of the process in desensitizing people as other therapies that are along similar lines, such as flooding, work without pre-emptive, inhibitory relaxation techniques. A review of empirical evidence confirmed that therapy without relaxation was equally effective and this gave birth to exposure therapy.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: A review of Taylor's (2002) classification of reciprocal inhibition as being short-term but with long term effects within the understanding of desensitization doesn't make sense due to it being theoretically similar to reactive inhibition which is longer term as it develops conditioned inhibition.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: Counterconditioning suggests that the anxiety response is replaced by a relaxation response through conditioning during the desensitization process. Counterconditioning is the behavioural equivalent of reciprocal inhibition which is understood as a neurological process. Wolpe (1958) used this mechanism to explain the long-term effects of systematic desensitization as it reduces avoidance responses and therefore excessive avoidance behaviours contributing to anxiety disorders. However, this explanation is not supported by empirical evidence.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: For similar reasons to reciprocal inhibition, counterconditioning is criticized as the underpinning mechanism for desensitization due to therapies that don't suggest a replacement emotion for anxiety being effective in desensitizing people. It is to be noted that there would be no behavioural difference between if reciprocal inhibition or counterconditioning were the functioning mechanisms.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: This theory explains that with increased exposure to stimulus there will be a decreased response from the phobic subject. There is empirical evidence to suggest that overall phobia responses are decreased in people who have specific phobias with in vivo exposure, however, empirical evidence does not support habituation as an explanation of desensitization due to its reversible and short-term nature.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: Phobic responses are decreased after exposure to stimuli without avoidance and with a lack of a reinforcement. However, this cannot be used as an explanation for why desensitization works as it solely describes the functional relationship between absent reinforcement and phobic responses and lacks an actual mechanism for why such relationship exists.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: Wolpe disagreed that extinction could be the explanatory mechanism of how desensitization occurs with therapies based on exposure as he believed that repeated exposure was insufficient and had likely been already happened during the people with specific phobia's lives.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: Exposure to phobic stimuli and then a subsequent avoidance response may strengthen the future anxiety as the avoidance response reduces the anxiety which therefore reinforces the avoidant behaviour (prominent feature of specific phobias and anxiety disorders). Therefore, exposure with non-avoidance seen as essential in the desensitization process.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: This is the view that a persons' belief in themselves of being able to cope increases, especially when moving up the exposure hierarchy and having confirmatory experiences of being able to cope from the lower levels. The increase in self-efficacy then explains fear reduction i.e. desensitization to stimuli.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: This mechanism as an explanation for desensitization lacks an explanation for how increased expectation of fear reduction actually leads to reduced fear responses and how if a person didn't actually experience a reduced fear response whether desensitization will have occurred as their anxiety response will reaffirm their phobia.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: This theory suggests that because people expect that the therapy is going to work and change their view on how they are going to receive the phobic stimuli after speaking with the therapist, their responses will align with that and display reduced anxiety Marcia et al. (1969) found that those with high expectancy change (receiving full expectancy treatment) had comparable results to those who had systematic desensitization therapy suggesting its just a change in expectancy that reduces fear responses.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: R.J McNally explains "fear is represented in memory as a network comprising stimulus propositions that express information about feared cues, response propositions that express information about behavioural and physiologic responses to these cues, and meaning propositions that elaborate on the significance of other elements in the fear structure". Excessive fear such as phobias can be understood as a problem in this structure which lead to problems processing information leading to exaggerated fear responses. Using this information about fear networks, desensitization can be achieved accessing the fear network using matching stimuli to information in the fear network and then having the person engage with the stimuli to input new information into the network by disconfirming existing propositons.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: The medial prefrontal cortex works with the amygdala and when damaged, a phobic subject will find desensitization more difficult to achieve. Neurons in this area aren't fired during the desensitization process despite reducing spontaneous fear responses when artificially fired suggesting the area stores extinction memories that reduce phobic responses to future stimuli related to the phobia (conditioned) which explains the long-term impact of desensitization.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: NMDA receptors have been found to play a key role in extinction of fear and therefore the use of an agonist would accelerate the reduction in fear responses during the process of desensitization.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: With the widespread research and development of behavioural therapies and experiments being conducted in order to understand the mechanisms driving desensitization, a consensus often arises that exposure is the key element of desensitization. This suggests the steps leading up to the actual exposure such as relaxation techniques and the development of an exposure hierarchy are redundant steps for effective desensitization.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: Animals can also be desensitized to their rational or irrational fears. A race horse who fears the starting gate can be desensitized to the fearful elements (the creak of the gate, the starting bell, the enclosed space) one at a time, in small doses or at a distance. Clay et al. (2009) conducted an experiment whereby he allocated rhesus macaques to either a desensitization group or a control group, finding that those in the desensitization group showed a significant reduction in both the rate and duration of fearful behavior. This supports the use of PRT training. Desensitization is commonly used with simple phobias like insect phobia. In addition, desensitization therapy has been shown to be a useful tool in training domesticated dogs. Systematic desensitization used in conjunction with counter-conditioning was shown to reduce problem behaviours in dogs, such as vocalization and property destruction.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: Desensitization also refers to the potential for reduced responsiveness to actual violence caused by exposure to violence in the media, although this topic is debated in the scientific literature on the topic. Desensitization may arise from different sources of media, including TV, video games and movies. Some scholars suggest that violence may prime thoughts of hostility, with the possibility of affecting the way we perceive others and interpret their actions.


title: Desensitization (psychology)

text: It is hypothesized that initial exposure to violence in the media may produce a number of aversive responses such as increased heart rate, fear, discomfort, perspiration and disgust. However, prolonged and repeated exposure to violence in the media may reduce or habituate the initial psychological impact until violent images do not elicit these negative responses. Eventually the observer may become emotionally and cognitively desensitized to media violence. In one experiment, participants who played violent video games showed lower heart rate and galvanic skin response readings, which the authors interpreted as displaying a physiological desensitization to violence. However, other studies have failed to replicate this finding. Some scholars have questioned whether becoming desensitized to media violence specifically transfers to becoming desensitized to real-life violence.


title: The Secret World

text: The Secret World is a massively multiplayer online role-playing video game set in a modern-day real world under attack from occult forces. Ragnar Tørnquist led development of the initial game for Funcom. "The Secret World" uses a subscription-optional, buy-to-play business model, requiring players only to buy the game with no additional subscription fees, with additional benefits to those members still paying a subscription.


title: The Secret World

text: In the game, the player's character joins one of three world-controlling secret societies attempting to repel, mitigate or exploit the attack of Lovecraftian entities and other immortal beings in coastal Maine, rural Egypt, Transylvania, a quarantined section of Tokyo, a utopian community outside South Africa's Cape Town, and (planned) a section of the river Congo; and to advance their society's agenda over that of the others.


title: The Secret World

text: The game uses a contemporary setting, borrowing heavily from the horror fiction genre and folklore, with a fog-ringed, zombie-infested New England fishing village for the novice player, mummies and cultists in Egypt for the mid-level player, followed by vampires and werewolves in Transylvania and ghosts, robots, Oni and an interdimensional occult cancer in Tokyo. Mission content bleeds into player faction headquarters in London, Seoul and the DUMBO neighborhood in Brooklyn, and into the game's transport network, along the subterranean branches of Yggdrasil in Agartha.


title: The Secret World

text: Unlike many other MMORPGs, there is no need to stop to use most of a character's attacks and abilities; as a result, combat is faster and movement-based. The character is free (and at higher levels, occasionally obliged) to redevelop their abilities on the go, to better prepare themselves for specific threats or better integrate into a group. Unlike traditional MMORPGs, advancement is primarily through equipment, using experience points to buy additional abilities and more powerful weapons.


title: The Secret World

text: The Secret World allows the player to control a character or avatar within a game world in third- or first-person view. This character can be used for exploration, fighting monsters, completing missions, and interacting with players and non-player characters (NPCs).


title: The Secret World

text: The game starts with the player choosing a default "dimension" while playing solo. This also decides which battlegroup the player is placed in within Player versus Player battlegrounds. The game makes use of a single server technology that allows players to meet up with people from any of the different servers, both in regular gameplay as well as instances and dungeons.


title: The Secret World

text: "The Secret World" character starts the game by joining one of three "factions": the Illuminati, the Templars or the Dragon. This determines the character's home city as well as a set of faction-specific missions and their allies in PvP. After choosing their faction, the player is taken to the character creator where they can choose their character's gender, height, face, hair, makeup and clothing.


title: The Secret World

text: The Secret World offers players a choice between tab-targeted combat or a more action-based combat where the target is selected with a crosshair in the middle of the screen. Abilities can be activated by pressing a certain hotkey and most abilities can also be activated while the character is moving. The player can choose from 9 different weapon types, divided in three categories: melee, magic and ranged. Melee weapons include: blades, hammers and fist weapons. Magic weapons include: blood magic, chaos magic and elementalism. Ranged weapons include: shotguns, pistols and assault rifles. Note: After the game relaunched, the player may only choose from a few predefined classes.


title: The Secret World

text: The player can wield two of these weapons simultaneously and is also allowed 7 active and 7 passive abilities at a time. Active abilities are further divided between builders and consumers. Builders build resources either on the target or the player, which are then consumed by a consumer ability. The amount of resource consumed then decides the amount of damage that the consumer ability does.


title: The Secret World

text: The game has a total of 525 abilities which are stored in an "ability wheel" that allows the character to change their class and weapon types, as well as customize their character's roles, at any point in time. This differs from traditional MMOs that lock the player to a class at the initial character creation phase. There is also an auxiliary wheel which includes a different type of weapons, referred to as auxiliary weapons. These auxiliary weapons can be unlocked by playing specific missions and they allow the player to add an additional active and passive ability for this auxiliary weapon. A total of 5 auxiliary weapons have been released: flamethrower, rocket launcher, quantum brace, chainsaw and whip.


title: The Secret World

text: Abilities can be further improved by augments gainable by doing a specific set of missions referred to as scenarios. Augments are divided in four categories: damage, support, healing and survivability. Augments add direct increases to abilities such as increasing a certain stat or effect for this specific ability. Completing issue 11 also unlocks a special "ultimate ability" that does a high amount of damage to up to 30 enemies in a 9-metre radius. This ability has to be recharged by killing mobs and can only be used on a mob once every ten minutes. Ultimate abilities have been disabled in PvP.


title: The Secret World

text: The missions come in several varieties. The main plot follows a faction-driven quest storyline. Characters can also take on a main mission, a dungeon mission, faction-limited side quests, and three open side quests. Some missions involve fetching items or fighting monsters; others include a variety of puzzles that are quasi-alternate reality games that require "searching the Internet" for clues with an in-game browser. Investigation missions have players find facts and solve problems, and differ from the hack-and-slash missions. Sabotage missions require players to navigate areas, preferably without being spotted by enemies or automated traps.


title: The Secret World

text: "The Secret World" also supports groupings of characters called "cabals", each made up of members from a single faction, although many players have opted to develop their own off-game groupings to unite characters from different factions.


title: The Secret World

text: "The Secret World" has four main modes of Player vs Player (PvP) content; The Fusang Projects, a perpetual PvP zone based on capturing and holding "Facilities" against the other two factions, El Dorado, a timed "capture the flag" style match with four "relics" that must be controlled to gain points for the team, Stonehenge, a timed "king of the hill" style three faction match with 5 players per team, and Shambala, a two team faction independent "team deathmatch" type of match. "The Secret World" PvP awarded "White Marks of Venice" which could be exchanged for "Black Marks of Venice" at an exchange rate of 100 to 1. Currently, however, the game has eliminated PvP specific currency, and PvP minigames now issue Black Bullion and Marks of the Pantheon just the same as dungeons and missions. The only exception for this is the Shambala minigame, which also awards special PvP specific signets that can be bound to gear.


title: The Secret World

text: The game features an original setting created by Funcom, with contemporary elements as well as "magic, myths, conspiracies and dark horrors." Tørnquist debunked several rumors surrounding "The Secret World", stating that "there are no aliens or science fiction elements" in it. He also denied any connection to "The Longest Journey".


title: The Secret World

text: The game is set in the "modern day real world" but also incorporates pieces of ancient mythologies, real and alternative history, urban legends, and pop culture, and ties them into an original backstory. The latter is said to go back in time for 100 million years and encompass extinct ancient civilizations.


title: The Secret World

text: The players will assume the roles of supernatural heroes who participate in a "future war between good and evil", fighting dark monsters that threaten the modern world. Tørnquist identified the genre of the story as dark fantasy, featuring vampires, demons and zombies. The player is free to travel across different locations of the world (both real, like London, New York and Seoul, and mythical, such as Agartha, the legendary city located within Hollow Earth and the Hell dimension) and even in time, to pursue the overall plot and investigate new mysteries in connection to the dark invasion. The overall plot has a conclusion but the designers also leave room for future issues and expansions.


title: The Secret World

text: H. P. Lovecraft's works, the "Indiana Jones" franchise and Stephen King's novels are major inspirations for the game's settings and storylines.


title: The Secret World

text: A bee flies into the character's sleeping mouth one month after an occult terrorist attack in Tokyo subways. In dreams the character is offered survival of the fast-approaching End of Days in return for service to an Elder God, while a good and bad angel advise the player to defy the god or else make wary use of it. The character awakes with magical powers which the character spends a week learning to control before being recruited as an agent either politely by the Templars, menacingly by the Illuminati, or incomprehensibly by the Dragon. The character then travels to London, Brooklyn or Seoul to receive training and endure a variously-induced hypnotic flashback of the Tokyo disaster. After choosing weapons they are sent to the first of several supernatural disaster zones around the world to advance their society's interests.


title: The Secret World

text: The first three playfields are on fictional Solomon Island, Maine, walled off by occult fog and besieged by zombies, with heavy influences from H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King (references to horror writings such as Edgar Allan Poe's and King's include "Flagg's Pharmacy", the "Overlook Motel", "Jack & Wendy's Bed & Breakfast," and an occupation of the town by ravens with unpleasant habits. NPC have Kingian names like "Creed" and "Bannerman"). Scandinavian "Draug" undead and ancient Mayan invaders, some human, begin to reveal the legacy of an ancient war fought on the mountain to control what is beneath it. A black liquid called the "filth" bubbles up from beneath the mountain, rapidly corrupting the minds and bodies of all creatures who contact it and gradually revealed to consist of the dreams of old gods. The player's investigation centers upon a man calling himself Beaumont who is working with the world's most popular New Age cult, Morninglight, actually bent on feeding the world to eldritch beings. Also present on the island are the Order of Phoenician Sailors, a resentful global pirate/mercenary army, and the in-house soldiers and scientists of Orochi, the world's largest tech conglomerate. The player gradually discovers the legendary identities of both Beaumont and of a sword which, brought by fishermen to the island, initiated the horrors there. Forging an alliance with the island's Native American community, the character enlists ancient powers to defeat Beaumont. Dungeons accessible from the island include: the site of a capsized tanker further offshore haunted by a small Cthulhu avatar; a part of the Hell Dimensions where a human bent on redeeming Hell is held captive; and the island's ancient past where the war over the mountain is fought.


title: The Secret World

text: After facing Beaumont, the character is sent to the Valley of the Sun God, a fictional tourist area in Egypt. One map in the area hides a hidden ancient city built to worship an evil god, while the other boasts a small modern town situated above the as-yet-undiscovered ruins of ancient Thinis. Recently, blights resembling the "seven plagues" of Egypt have manifested, along with a Filth eruption associated with the return of the cult of historic sun-god Aten and, indeed, of the historical pharaoh Akhenaten, father of Tutankhamen and initiator of Ancient Egypt's short-lived experiment with monotheist Aten worship. The player is assisted by a mafia of black-marketeering mummies, by a millennia-old paramilitary resistance movement named the Marya, by a cagey eyewitness of old-testament events wielding what seems to be Aaron's Rod, and by Akhenaten's rebellious high priest and the seven of his own children he sacrificed in order to create seven avatars of the Egyptian pantheon, in the form of giant Sentinel statues. Dungeons include another Hell Dimension and an ancient Aten temple teeming with what's left of some very unwise Orochi scientists.


title: The Secret World

text: The next location the character visits is Bacaş County, Transylvania, where an ancient human-fairy truce has been broken by an army of vampires besieging the local town. The plot reveals this siege is at the request of their queen Mara, concealing her work to exploit another Filth source and gateway into other dimensions originally opened by the Orochi Group using Emma, a captive teenaged psychic. The vampires are being opposed by the Drăculești, a group founded by Vlad Dracula to hunt and fight supernatural creatures. The Filth is also present in the Bacaş County and it is corrupting the land and its inhabitants.


title: The Secret World

text: The character later revisits the three main locations, and they slowly learn that all three major catastrophes are heavily linked to the Orochi Group and its mysterious leaders; Samuel Chandra and Lily Engel. The player faces Lily in Transylvania and her true identity-Lilith-is revealed. Lily manages to escape to Kaidan and the character is sent to Venice by their handler. In Venice they discover that the group known as the Council of Venice, responsible for keeping the peace in the secret world, has been corrupted.


title: The Secret World

text: Finally the character goes to Kaidan, which is located in Tokyo, Japan. A bomb was released in the Kaidan subway, which started the spread of the Filth and the destruction of the world. The headquarters of the Orochi Group is also located in Kaidan, as is the Black Signal, the digital mind of a Filth cultist who now directs the Filth creatures in Kaidan. Several groups are fighting for control of Kaidan and it is up the player character to discover the mysteries of Tokyo, find out who released the bomb, and face Lily and the Orochi Group. The Tokyo areas utilize many Japanese legends, such as the Namahage.


title: The Secret World

text: After announcing the development of "The Secret World", Funcom project director Jørgen Tharaldsen informed the press that the game uses the same engine as "Age of Conan". According to Funcom, the game would blend elements of MMO gameplay with alternate reality gaming (ARG) and social networking.


title: The Secret World

text: At GDC 2009, Tørnquist gave an interview to GameSpot regarding "The Secret World", revealing more about its gameplay. There would be neither levels, nor classes in the game; instead, the character building would be skill-based. This way, the developers planned to avoid level grinding, allowing new players to join the game more easily. The player characters would be customizable to a large degree, particularly in their choice of clothing (except in PvP, where players must wear faction-specific uniforms), weapons (which range from shotguns to swords and can be customized and upgraded), and the supernatural powers they acquire. Combat against computer-controlled monsters would be one of the game's central points and will require more of player's attention than contemporary MMORPGs. Death in game results in the character returning as an "anima" and they have the option of returning to their body or respawning at a variety of resurrection locations. The players will be able to form teams to fight together but in an earlier blog posting, Tørnquist assured that the game can also be played in single-player mode, should a player choose not to play with a group. According to him, the game is story-driven and there is an overarching linear plot, as well as numerous side-quests, ranging from investigation to sabotage and hunting, since diversity of the gameplay will be another central point.


title: The Secret World

text: In an interview with GameSpot at the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo, Tørnquist and the lead designer Martin Bruusgaard revealed which playable factions ("secret societies") will be available in the game. The factions are: the London-based Templars, pious zealots "who would burn an entire village down to get their hands on one demon"; the New York City-based Illuminati, Machiavellian pragmatists who "believe that it's a tough world where only the strongest will survive"; and the Seoul-based "Dragon", who take a neutral stance between the other two and are "all about deceiving, orchestrating chaos, and waiting patiently for its time". A personality test to determine the players' inclination towards one of the factions was made available on the official "The Secret World" website soon after the reveal. It would be impossible to change factions without creating a new character. Additionally, players are able to create their own guilds, known as "cabals" in-game, affiliated with one of the main factions. All players' actions in the game are contribute to their ranking in their respective guilds and factions. The same interview revealed that PvP areas of the game are located in the region called Agartha inside the hollow Earth, where the players will fight for the invaluable resource known as "anima". This idea was dropped during closed beta due to unspecified reasons. Large scale PvP has later been revealed to take place in big persistent warzones. Control of these warzones has an effect on the rest of the players of a controlling faction, and provides bonus experience and other perks. There are also small mini-games in iconic locations such as Shambhala, El Dorado, and Stonehenge.


title: The Secret World

text: The pre-production of the game originally known as "Cabal" (and "The Entire World Online" in the earliest concepts) started in 2002, but in mid-2003, most of the working team was transferred to the development of "Dreamfall". "Cabal" was to be set in the same universe as the later "The Secret World" but in the 1920s instead of the contemporary period, with H. P. Lovecraft's works and the "Indiana Jones" franchise being major inspirations. The idea of setting the game in the 1920s was scrapped after lengthy discussions, in order to make the game more accessible for modern players.


title: The Secret World

text: The work on "The Secret World" was resumed in 2006, after "Dreamfall" shipped, with many of the latter's designers (including Ragnar Tørnquist) playing key roles in the former's development. "The Secret World" was produced at the Funcom studios in Oslo, Montreal and Beijing. In August 2008, it was stated that the development team consisted of people previously involved in the development of "", "Anarchy Online", "", "EverQuest II", and "The Longest Journey". In November Funcom stated that 70 people were working on the project. "The Secret World" uses the proprietary DreamWorld Engine.


title: The Secret World

text: On September 29, 2009, Funcom announced a reduction of 20% of its staff, resulting in "significant delay" for the release of "The Secret World". On January 10, 2011, Electronic Arts announced that it will co-publish "The Secret World" with Funcom. Funcom told VG247 that they were "leaving [their] options open" in regards to the 360 version.


title: The Secret World

text: On August 30, 2011, beta testing sign-up became available. On February 21, 2012, Funcom announced that "The Secret World" would be released on June 19. The first public beta test "Kingsmouth Calling" went live on May 11, 2012, available to all pre-purchasers of the game. The second public beta test "Hell Raised" went live on June 15, 2012, available to pre-purchasers and invited players. The company also revealed that over 750,000 gamers had applied to beta-test the game, significantly higher than for their previous MMO, "".


title: The Secret World

text: On January 29, 2014, Norwegian economic crime unit Økokrim launched an investigation into suspected infringement of the provisions of the Securities Trading Act concerning the 2012 launch of "The Secret World".


title: The Secret World

text: The first promotional material appeared on May 8, 2007, when a picture was leaked into the internet, containing a poem, a Knights Templar seal, and several sentences in Spanish, Norwegian, French, German and Hebrew. When solved, the poem led to a series of internet pages, one of them with a riddle, and eventually to the newly created official forum. This was also the start of an alternate reality game.


title: The Secret World

text: The websites led to a Flash page with a countdown timer that uses Eastern Arabic numerals. The timer would presumably have reached zero at 12:00 AM on December 21, 2012, adjusted for the location of Funcom headquarters. The date is the end of the Mayan calendar cycle, which is notable in Maya mythology. A puzzle was also included on the same page, hinting at the destruction of three major cities. Solving the puzzle gave the players 5 sets of coordinates, revealed several early screenshots from the game and marked the end of the first ARG.


title: The Secret World

text: Between 2007 and 2014 Funcom has created several alternate reality games such as: "Dark Days Are Coming", "Two Lines Twine", "The End of Days" and "Division 66". The alternate reality games were created using Twitter, Flickr, 8tracks and several websites created by Funcom such as Kingsmouth and the official game forums. One of these ARGs, called "The End of Days", engaged more than 600,000 players from 22 countries and also had real-life quests in seven cities around the world. The ARGs provided the players with more insight in the lore and story behind "The Secret World" and also in-game rewards.


title: The Secret World

text: A first teaser trailer featuring the Dragon faction was released on April 7, 2009, during the GDC 2009. A second teaser featuring the Templar faction was released on September 4, 2009. A teaser presenting the fictitious town of Kingsmouth was released on February 2, 2010. On March 23, 2010 (i.e. 10 days after the GDC 2010 of San Francisco, California), a short teaser was released, showing some extremely brief in-game sequences and announcing the release of a bigger teaser on March 25, 2010. This last one showed some fights in Kingsmouth. Most available teasers can be viewed on the game's homepage, however, GameSpot's interviews with Ragnar Tørnquist, on the various factions within the game, included scenes from teaser trailers.