Residents in Western US Fear Government Plans to Resume Nucl

 

By Serena Parker

Preston J. Truman grew up in Enterprise, Utah, a small farming community of 800 people located 100 miles east of the U.S. government's nuclear weapons test site in the state of Nevada.

"My actual first memory of life is sitting on my father's knee watching an A-bomb go off on the Nevada Test Site," he says. Mr. Truman, the U.S. says government would warn citizens when they were testing and where the radioactive fallout cloud was moving. But he says officials insisted there was no danger, even after people started getting sick.

"Within a few years after the testing started, we had our first case of childhood leukemia in town, and then there were clusters in nearby communities and then pretty soon it was adult cases," he remembers. "And in a very short period of time we all knew that something was dreadfully wrong."

The U.S. government finally banned above ground nuclear testing in 1963, but underground testing continued into the 1970's. It was only in 1990 that the U.S. Congress passed legislation to provide compensation to people who lived under the clouds of nuclear fallout, so-called Downwinders. Downwind refers to the fact that nuclear fallout was carried from Nevada by westerly winds across the continental¹ United States.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, provides $50,000 dollars to individuals living or working in 21 counties in three states who were downwind of the Nevada Test Site and who later contracted cancer as a result of this exposure. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 11,000 people in the United States died of cancers caused by exposure to radioactive fallout. In some instances, entire families were afflicted². One resident of Arizona, Danielle Stephens, has lost 26 of 31 family members to cancer.

Although radiation exposure in these 21 counties was high, there were similar so-called hot spots elsewhere in the United States. According to Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, the radioactive fallout has many components³, including iodine-131, which tends to concentrate in animal's milk.

"Milk contamination happened in hot spots where fallout rained out of the sky," he says. "And the greatest exposure was in those hot spots for farm children who were drinking fresh milk. So you could find people in say Iowa, Kansas, even in Vermont that were very highly exposed because they lived in hot spots."

Currently, these people are not covered under RECA, but that may change soon. The National Academies' National Research Council is considering whether the U.S. Congress should amend⁴ RECA to include additional geographic⁵ areas and other types of cancers. Dr. Isaf Al-Nabulsi who is directing the study tells VOA that the report will be turned in to Congress at the end of March 2005 and made available to the public by the end of April.

Downwinders, like Utah resident J Truman, are anxious to read the report's recommendations, especially since many of them fear the government is planning to resume nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site.

"Why are they putting money into getting the test site ready to resume testing on a presidential order within a short period of time? Of course, it means testing if it goes forward, We can foresee no need for any testing in the near future. We are not planning any tests. We are not discussing any tests. It's just not on the table," he says.

That's Bryan Wilkes, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration in Washington. He says the current budget does contain money to maintain the Nevada Test Site, but there are no plans to start mass producing nuclear weapons or testing them. "We do have money every year in the budget for what's called test readiness," he says. "That's because the Nevada Test Site is a huge complex that requires a lot of upkeep. And if we let that fall into disrepair that could mean that we wouldn't have any means for testing. And there could come a point some day - we don't foresee it right now - but there could come a point that there would be a need for testing."

Bryan Wilkes says the only reason the government would conduct a nuclear test is if there were some serious safety issue that couldn't be resolved using computer models. But many Downwinders, who feel that they were betrayed once by their government, remain unconvinced.

For focus, I'm Serena Parker.

注释：
nuclear weapon 核武器
Nevada 内华达州（美国西部内陆州）
A-bomb 原子弹
go off 爆炸
radioactive fallout 放射性沉降物
leukemia 白血病
dreadfully 可怕地
legislation 立法
compensation 补偿，赔偿
downwind 顺风
afflict 使痛苦，折磨
radiation exposure 辐射暴露（接触）
component 成分
contamination 污染
resume 再继续
readiness 准备就绪
foresee 预见

1 continental   

adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的

参考例句：

• A continental climate is different from an insular one.大陆性气候不同于岛屿气候。
• The most ancient parts of the continental crust are 4000 million years old.大陆地壳最古老的部分有40亿年历史。

2 afflicted   

使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• About 40% of the country's population is afflicted with the disease. 全国40%左右的人口患有这种疾病。
• A terrible restlessness that was like to hunger afflicted Martin Eden. 一阵可怕的、跟饥饿差不多的不安情绪折磨着马丁·伊登。

3 components   

（机器、设备等的）构成要素，零件，成分； 成分( component的名词复数 )； [物理化学]组分； [数学]分量； （混合物的）组成部分

参考例句：

• the components of a machine 机器部件
• Our chemistry teacher often reduces a compound to its components in lab. 在实验室中化学老师常把化合物分解为各种成分。

4 amend   

vt.修改，修订，改进；n.[pl.]赔罪，赔偿

参考例句：

• The teacher advised him to amend his way of living.老师劝他改变生活方式。
• You must amend your pronunciation.你必须改正你的发音。

5 geographic   

adj.地理学的，地理的

参考例句：

• The city's success owes much to its geographic position. 这座城市的成功很大程度上归功于它的地理位置。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Environmental problems pay no heed to these geographic lines. 环境问题并不理会这些地理界限。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法