May 15, 1984

Owners of the Seabrook nuclear power plant today unanimously approved a plan that they said should save Seabrook's first reactor and avert bankruptcy for the plant's main owner. The 16 utility-owners of the New Hampshire plant announced the agreement following an eight-hour closed-door meeting. Robert Hildreth of Merrill Lynch Capital Markets said the plan eliminates the main obstacle of earlier proposed solutions to the Seabrook crisis - making other owners responsible for the payments of the main owner, the Public Service Company of New Hampshire.

A Federal district judge ordered Attorney General William French Smith today to seek an independent counsel to investigate possible crimes by top officials in the transfer of documents to the 1980 Presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan from the Carter White House. In issuing the order, Judge Harold H. Greene noted that it was the first time any judge had ordered appointment of an independent counsel, or special prosecutor, over the objection of an attorney general. The Justice Department said it would appeal and seek a stay of the ruling. Judge Greene rejected Mr. Smith's argument that no judge had legal authority to review the Justice Department's conclusion that there was ''no credible evidence that the transfer violated any criminal law.''

A report in the Bridge column May 9 about the Long Island Regional Championships in Hempstead misidentified one of the two Flight B Pairs winners. He is Leonard Helfgott of Teaneck, N.J.

A fire that killed eight people and injured seven Friday night in a haunted house attraction at an amusement park here was started by a malfunctioning strobe light used to create an eerie scene, officials said tonight. George H. Piercy Jr., secretary of the township's Fire Department, said a preliminary investigation had found the blaze at the Haunted Castle at the Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park started when electricity built up in a strobe that had failed to discharge properly. That caused the strobe to short-circuit or explode and set the attraction on fire, he said. The blaze, whipped by strong winds, swept through the complex of 17 linked aluminum trailers.

After more than a decade of technical development and perhaps the most controversy over any modern weapon, the Air Force's MX strategic missile is once again a hot political issue in Congress. By engineering standards alone, the missile would probably have entered the popular consciousness in a way other Pentagon products seldom do. The missile, carrying 10 to 12 warheads, is designed to fly at least 6,000 miles and hit its target within 300 feet. But at a time when the West has been seized by wide-ranging debate about the cost, both fiscal and moral, of all nuclear weapons, the MX has come to symbolize far more than just a technological marvel. For its proponents, the MX has always meant a crucial element in the Soviet-American equation of nuclear deterrence. For its opponents, it is a wasteful, destabilizing weapon that represents the very worst instinct in the nuclear arms race.