hot zone

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hot zone

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hot zone (plural hot zones)

1. (firefighting) An area to which access is restricted because it is contaminated with radiation or a chemical or biological biohazard.
   • 1997, U S Fire Administration, FEMA, Fire Department Response to Biological Threat at B'nai B'rith Headquarters, page 6:

     A hot zone was established quickly. Unfortunately, these efforts were compromised by a few MPD officers on the scene who did not understand the serious nature of the potential chemical/biological threat and treated the incident more as a bomb scare. These officers initially crossed in and out of the hot zone, and could have contaminated themselves and other personnel had this been a real incident.

   • 2004, Stanley E. Toy, Hot Zone Log: Personal HazMat Record, page 22:

     Medical monitoring is an essential aspect to conducting operations in the hot zone.

   • 2012, Jeff Kingston, Contemporary Japan, page 210:

     Subsequently, it became evident that Iitate was a hot zone with very high levels of radiation contamination and all of its residents and evacuees had to be evacuated.

2. An area where fighting or hostilities are likely to erupt.
   • 2012, Jim Scott, Wanderings and Sojourns:

     The bush war still scared him. Even more this day for he knew he was to travel through a hot zone with only three other men, none of them soldiers either, to an area close to the Gona-Re-Zhou transited extensively by groups of well armed communist trained insurgents based in Mozambique.

   • 2014, Lorenzo Carcaterra, The Wolf:

     Any spot I could point to on a map was about to turn into a hot zone. There was too much trougle brewing for it not to bubble over, and by the summer of 2012, I had a major decision to make.

   • 2015, Gustavo Morello, The Catholic Church and Argentina's Dirty War, page 52:

     In the Argentina of the seventies, Tucumán was a “hot” zone.

   • 2018, Mark Coppenger, A Skeptic's Guide to Arts in the Church:

     Evangelical discourse on the role of arts in the church can be radioactive, and the twenty-one contributors to this book walk right into the ""hot zone"" to pick up on twenty contentious questions.

3. An apparatus for growing crystals at very hot temperatures.
   • 2014, Peter Rudolph, Handbook of Crystal Growth: Bulk Crystal Growth, page 140:

     The “hot zone” is the key part in controlling the growth process, the melt and gas flow, and the concentration of the intrinsic point defects and their aggregates.

   • 2014, Golla Eranna, Crystal Growth and Evaluation of Silicon for VLSI and ULSI, page 126:

     The temperature field in the hot zone is, to a large extent, determined by the distribution of the induced Joulean heat or EM power.

   • 2018, Roberto Fornari, Single Crystals of Electronic Materials: Growth and Properties, page 64:

     Most hot-zone designs for CZ growth are focused on cost reduction. An efficient hot zone is designed for high pulling speeds or high production per hour (PPH, kg/h) and low power consumption.

4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see hot,‎ zone.
   • 2014, Ryan Bañagale, Arranging Gershwin:

     The goal was for passengers to feel relaxation in the initial cool zone, a bit more motion in the hot zone at the center, and a renewed sense of relaxation as they entered the second cool zone and exited the space.