August 15, 1989

LEAD: The nuclear reactor's auxiliary equipment hums and its operators busy themselves with myriad details over a panel with hundreds of dials and controls. But the white dial in the middle that monitors electric output reads zero.

LEAD: Four years of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's perestroika, or restructuring, have done little to change one basic rule of the Soviet economy: the producer, not the consumer, is always right.

LEAD: THE power of emotions to override even the most rational decisions may be explained by a new discovery about the brain, researchers say. The data suggest that the brain is arranged so key aspects of emotional life, like primitive fears, can operate largely independent of thought.

LEAD: Falconbridge Ltd., the large Canadian mining company that agreed two weeks ago to be acquired by Amax Inc., received a competing offer yesterday from its largest shareholder, Noranda Inc. of Toronto, bidding jointly with Trelleborg, a large Swedish industrial concern.

LEAD: In endless caravans of cars, buses and trains, more than a quarter of a million Bulgarians of Turkish descent have streamed into Turkey in the last three months, forming one of Europe's largest refugee flows since World War II.

LEAD: Prices of Treasury securities tumbled and yields rose sharply in light trading yesterday. The new bellwether 30-year bond, for example, the 8 1/8 percent issue of 2019, was offered in late trading at 98 26/32, down nearly 1 1/2 points, or $15 for each $1,000 face amount, to yield 8.23 percent, up from 8.10 percent on

LEAD: Because of the Feast of the Assumption, alternate-side parking rules will be suspended in New York City today. Other regulations remain in effect.

LEAD: In a case with possibly important implications for scores of criminal and paternity cases across the nation, a Bronx judge ruled yesterday that sophisticated genetic tests that had linked a murder suspect to a victim were not scientifically reliable.

LEAD: The United States stepped up its efforts today to persuade the Palestine Liberation Organization to agree to Israel's proposal for elections in the West Bank, while also encouraging a new Egyptian initiative to bridge the gaps between Israel and the Palestinians.

LEAD: President Bush said today that he would nominate Richard C. Breeden, his troubleshooter in the savings and loan crisis, as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

LEAD: ''I've got to take care of my family,'' said 26-year-old Anthony Kelly, explaining why he took a job at Friction Division Products Inc., a brake-lining manufacturer that has been cited by OSHA as a potentially deadly place to work.

LEAD: In less than a decade, the law firm headed by Armand P. D'Amato, the brother of Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, has blossomed from a modest partnership into one of the most flourishing legal practices on Long Island.