VOA慢速英语2012 IN THE NEWS - Japan, a Year After the Disaster

IN THE NEWS - Japan, a Year After the Disaster

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

This Sunday is the first anniversary of the major earthquake and tsunami¹ in Japan. It led to one of the worst nuclear accidents ever.

The quake struck near the east coast of Honshu, Japan's main island. It was one of the most powerful ever recorded -- a magnitude nine. A wall of water struck the land.

Twenty thousand people died, mostly from the tsunami. More than two hundred fifty thousand buildings were destroyed. Nearly four hundred thousand people were left homeless.

Some rebuilding has begun. But many people are still in temporary housing.

Three reactors² at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station suffered meltdowns. During the crisis, some government officials even considered urging people to leave Tokyo. VOA's Steve Herman reported on the disaster.

STEVE HERMAN: "I was among those near the atomic power facility on the fifteenth of March when, unknown to the public, an estimated ten million becquerels per hour of radioactive substances spewed from the three crippled reactors. For days, I and millions of people in Japan absorbed significantly higher doses of radiation than we normally would have been exposed to."

Radioactive material spread over an area that includes some of Japan's most valuable farmland. Officials say eighty-one thousand hectares of farmland are too heavily irradiated to let farmers plant rice. Vegetable, fruit and dairy farms also are affected³.

Japan's government has been seeking advice from foreign scientists about how to reduce the radiation levels. Some of the scientists are from the former Soviet⁴ Union, site of the nineteen ninety-six Chernobyl nuclear accident.

No one has died from radiation as a result of the accident in Japan. Some scientists and government officials say radiation levels even close to the disabled power plant are safe. But since the disaster, officials have faced growing distrust among the Japanese public.

Japan also finds itself facing huge costs for cleaning up after the nuclear disaster and for paying damages to victims. Before the accident, nuclear power produced thirty percent of Japan's energy needs. Now some people think the accident will be the end of the nuclear power industry in the world's third largest economy.

Thorne Lay is a seismologist with the University of California, Santa Cruz. He says engineers had underestimated the chances that a great wave could drown the emergency power systems at the Japanese plant.

THORNE LAY: "Those are mostly design weaknesses that a good engineering think-through might say, let's put the backup power at very high elevations⁵ so that it could not possibly get drowned out."

Mr. Lay says scientists are better able to predict earthquake risks in some areas than they were in the past. Still, he says, they cannot provide decision makers⁶ with all the answers.

THORNE LAY: "We will try to our best to give early warning if that's possible and set up emergency response systems, but ultimately individuals have to prepare themselves."

In the United States, a nuclear plant is being built in Georgia. This is the country's first new one since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania in nineteen seventy-nine.

Safety is not the only concern. The cost of building a nuclear plant and producing electricity from it is much higher than other sources of power.

And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember.

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Contributing: Lisa Bryant, Steve Herman and Rosanne Skirble

1 tsunami   

n.海啸

参考例句：

• Powerful quake sparks tsunami warning in Japan.大地震触发了日本的海啸预警。
• Coastlines all around the Indian Ocean inundated by a huge tsunami.大海啸把印度洋沿岸地区都淹没了。

2 reactors   

起反应的人( reactor的名词复数 )； 反应装置； 原子炉； 核反应堆

参考例句：

• The TMI nuclear facility has two reactors. 三哩岛核设施有两个反应堆。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• The earliest production reactors necessarily used normal uranium as fuel. 最早为生产用的反应堆，必须使用普通铀作为燃料。

3 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

4 Soviet   

adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃

参考例句：

• Zhukov was a marshal of the former Soviet Union.朱可夫是前苏联的一位元帅。
• Germany began to attack the Soviet Union in 1941.德国在1941年开始进攻苏联。

5 elevations   

（水平或数量）提高( elevation的名词复数 )； 高地； 海拔； 提升

参考例句：

• Weight of the crust changes as elevations are eroded and materials are deposited elsewhere. 当高地受到侵蚀，物质沉积到别的地方时，地壳的重量就改变。
• All deck elevations are on the top of structural beams. 所有甲板标高线均指结构梁顶线。

6 makers   

n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式）

参考例句：

• The makers of the product assured us that there had been no sacrifice of quality. 这一产品的制造商向我们保证说他们没有牺牲质量。
• The makers are about to launch out a new product. 制造商们马上要生产一种新产品。 来自《简明英汉词典》