CNN News: 華盛頓核廢料存儲場隧道坍塌 未造成人員傷亡

Earlier this week, there was a cave-in at a tunnel in Washington state. No one was hurt but officials scrambled to fix that quickly because it's part of the Hanford Facility, a nuclear waste site. The collapsed 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.
本周初，華盛頓州一個隧道發(fā)生坍塌。該事故并未造成人員傷亡，不過官方正在竭力迅速修復該隧道，因為這一隧道屬于漢福德核廢料存儲場。坍塌的隧道被覆蓋在8英尺深的土壤中。這座隧道建于冷戰(zhàn)時期，用于放置核廢料罐。
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, in1945, leading to its surrender that ended World War II.
這些核廢料被用來生產(chǎn)核武器的一種燃料——钚。實際上，漢福德儲存場的一些原料被用來制造了于1945年投放在日本長崎的原子彈，而原子彈的投放導致了日本投降以及二戰(zhàn)結(jié)束。
Plutonium is incredibly toxic 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.
钚對人類的毒性非常大。它會引發(fā)肺癌、骨癌和其他疾病。所以，在發(fā)現(xiàn)坍塌事故后，該工廠的3000名工人被要求在適當?shù)牡胤奖茈y。有人擔心污染可能會通過空氣擴散。
Leaks have happened at this facility before, but a spokesman says the tunnel collapse 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.
此前，這一工廠曾發(fā)生過泄露事故，但一名發(fā)言人表示，這是首次發(fā)生隧道坍塌事故。該區(qū)域于上世紀90年代中期被封，工人門不清楚為何會發(fā)生坍塌。初步測試顯示，目前沒有證據(jù)顯示輻射泄漏，也沒有證據(jù)表明工人受到了輻射。
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.
美國能源部計劃用清潔土壤覆蓋隧道，于1989年啟動的清理該儲存場的工作將繼續(xù)進行。
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.
有關核廢料大家應該知道的一件事是，它極難以被儲存。核廢料要儲存在遠離人類的地方，同時還要確保以不會讓它們泄露到環(huán)境中的方式儲存。這是因為核廢料的放射性可能會持續(xù)數(shù)千年。
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.
核廢料在美國已儲存了數(shù)十年，但并沒有永久的解決方案。核廢料存放在美國30多個州的100個儲存場中。這令行業(yè)評論家們非常擔心，他們害怕這些儲存場可能易遭到恐怖襲擊或易受自然災難的影響。
Politicians for years have been trying to figure out a better solution to store nuclear waste, but it's become a thorny issue, because after all, nobody wants a nuclear waste site in their backyard.
多年來，政客們一直在試圖找出一個更好的解決核廢料的辦法，但它已成為一個棘手的問題，畢竟，沒有人希望在自家后院建個核廢料儲存場。