美国有线新闻 CNN 美国华盛顿州核废料隧道坍塌 初步检查未造成核泄漏

 

Earlier this week, there was a cave-in at a tunnel in Washington state. No one was hurt but officials scrambled¹ to fix that quickly because it's part of the Hanford Facility, a nuclear waste site. The collapsed³ tunnel was covered in eight feet of soil. It was built during the Cold War as a place to put rail cars contaminated with nuclear waste.

They've been used to produce plutonium, a fuel for nuclear weapons. In fact, some of the material from the Hanford site was used in the atomic bomb dropped in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, leading to its surrender that ended World War II.

Plutonium is incredibly toxic⁴ to humans. It can cause lung and bone cancer among other things. So, when the cave in was discovered, the 3,000 workers at the facility were told to shelter in place. There were concerns that contamination could spread through the air.

Leaks have happened at this facility before, but a spokesman says the tunnel collapse² is a first. The section was sealed in the mid-1990s, and workers don't know how it would have caved in. Initial tests showed there's no evidence of a radiation leak or that workers were exposed to it.

The U.S. Department of Energy plans to fill in the tunnel with clean soil and the effort to clean up the site, which started in 1989, will continue.

SUBTITLE⁵: The One Thing.

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The one thing you need to know about nuclear waste is that it is incredibly difficult to store. It needs to be far away from human reach and protected in a way so that it can't be leaked into the environment. That's because nuclear wastes can be radioactive for thousands and thousands of years.

Nuclear waste has been piling up in the U.S. for decades, but there's no permanent solution for it. It's stored across more than 30 states at more than 100 different sites. And that worries industry critics who feared that it could be vulnerable to a terrorist attack or natural disaster.

Politicians for years have been trying to figure out a better solution to store nuclear waste, but it's become a thorny⁶ issue, because after all, nobody wants a nuclear waste site in their backyard.

1 scrambled   

v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞

参考例句：

• Each scrambled for the football at the football ground. 足球场上你争我夺。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• He scrambled awkwardly to his feet. 他笨拙地爬起身来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

3 collapsed   

adj.倒塌的

参考例句：

• Jack collapsed in agony on the floor. 杰克十分痛苦地瘫倒在地板上。
• The roof collapsed under the weight of snow. 房顶在雪的重压下突然坍塌下来。

4 toxic   

adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的

参考例句：

• The factory had accidentally released a quantity of toxic waste into the sea.这家工厂意外泄漏大量有毒废物到海中。
• There is a risk that toxic chemicals might be blasted into the atmosphere.爆炸后有毒化学物质可能会进入大气层。

5 subtitle   

n.副题（书本中的），说明对白的字幕

参考例句：

• His new book has a subtitle.他的新书有一个副标题。
• Ah!I don't know why they don't subtitle these movies.唉！我不知道这些电影为什么不打字幕。

6 thorny   

adj.多刺的，棘手的

参考例句：

• The young captain is pondering over a thorny problem.年轻的上尉正在思考一个棘手的问题。
• The boys argued over the thorny points in the lesson.孩子们辩论功课中的难点。