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2022考研英语经济学人:福岛核泄漏十周年

Nuclear power must be well regulated, not ditched

核能应该得到良好的监管，而不该被人们抛弃

It is an essential weapon in the fight against climate change

它是应对气候变化的一大利器

It has been ten years since a tsunami laid waste the Pacific coast of northern Honshu, Japan’s most populous island. The tsunami and the undersea earthquake which triggered it, the largest ever recorded in the region, killed nearly 20,000 people, destroyed over 100,000 homes and threw the lives of tens of millions into turmoil.

十年前，一场海啸将日本较多的本州岛北部的太平洋海岸夷为了平地。此次海啸以及由其引发的海底地震均创下了该地区的历史之最，导致2万人丧生，超过10万座房屋被毁，数千万人流离失所。

The direct economic cost, estimated at over $200bn, was larger than that of any other natural disaster the world has seen. And yet for many around the world the event is remembered for just one thing: the ensuing crisis at the Fuku-shima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

据估计，此次灾难造成的直接经济损失超过2000亿美元，比世界上其他任何一起自然灾害造成的损失都要大。不过，对于世界各地的许多人来说，他们只因后面的一件事而记住了这场灾难：随之而来的福岛第一核电站危机。

The earthquake cut the plant off from outside sources of electricity. The tsunami easily topped the plant’s sea walls, flooding the underground bunkers containing its emergency generators—a foreseeable risk Japan’s neutered regulators had failed to foresee.

地震切断了工厂与外界的电力供应。海啸轻而易举地冲垮了核电站的海堤，淹没了装有应急发电机的地下掩体(这是日本监管机构未能预见到的可预见风险)。

Because there was no way to cool the reactor cores, the nuclear fuel within them began to melt; amid fire, explosion and alarming amounts of radiation, a puddle from hell began eating into the plant’s concrete foundations.

由于无法冷却反应堆堆芯，因此堆芯中的核燃料开始熔化;在火光、爆炸和惊人的辐射下，一个来自地狱的水坑开始侵蚀核电站的混凝土地基。

The world looked on aghast. In Shanghai and San Francisco iodine tablets and iodised salt jumped off the shelves as people looked for prophylaxis of which they had no need.

整个世界都震惊了。在上海和旧金山，人们开始寻找根本不必要的预防措施，碘片、碘盐货架被人们一扫而空。

In Germany the chancellor, Angela Merkel, who had long stood with business leaders against the country’s powerful anti-nuclear movement, ordered its reactors phased out. In China the world’s largest new nuclear-plant programme was put on hold. Talk of a “nuclear renaissance” to fight climate change fell silent.

就连长久以来一直与商界领袖一道反对德国激烈反核运动的默克尔都下令逐步关停该国的核反应堆。在中国，全球最大的新核电站计划暂时搁置。有关以“核复兴”应对气候变化的讨论也一度陷入了沉默。

The reaction, though understandable, was wrong. Nuclear power has a lot of drawbacks. Its large, slowly built plants are expensive both in absolute terms and in terms of the electricity they produce.

这种反应虽然可以理解，但却是错误的。核电确实存在诸多弊端。无论是从绝对价值上还是从发电量上看，中国那些建设缓慢的大型核电站都造价高昂。

Its very small but real risk of catastrophic failure requires a high level of regulation, and it has a disturbing history of regulatory capture, amply demonstrated in Japan. It produces extremely long-lived and toxic waste. And it is associated with the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

核电站发生灾难性事故的风险很小，但是想要预防风险就需要强有力的监管，况且核监管的历史本身就令人不安，日本的情况足以证明这一点。核电站会产生半衰期极长的有毒废物，还与核武器的扩散有关。

Most of the countries outside Europe that use nuclear power have some history of attempting to develop a bomb. All these factors contribute to an unease with the technology felt, to greater or lesser extent, by people all around the world.

欧洲以外大多数使用核能的国家都有尝试制造核弹的历史。所有这些因素都或多或少加剧了世界各地的人们对核技术的担忧。

Against all that, though, two things must be remembered. One is that well-regulated nuclear power is safe. With the terrible Soviet-era exception of Chernobyl, nuclear disasters come without large death tolls. It was the tsunami, not radiation, that claimed nearly all those lives in Fukushima.

尽管如此，有两点必须要记住。其一，监管良好的核能是非常安全的。除了苏联时期切尔诺贝利那场可怕的核灾难外，核事故通常不会造成巨大的人员伤亡。福岛灾难中的逝者大都是被海啸夺走了生命，而非核辐射。

The other is that the climate is in crisis, and nuclear plants can supply some of the vast amounts of emissions-free electricity the world needs if it is to cope. Solar and wind power are now much cheaper, but they are intermittent.

其二，我们正处于气候危机之中，想要解决这个问题，就需要可提供大量无排放电力的核电站。太阳能和风能确实很洁净，但都是断断续续的。

Providing a reliable grid is a lot easier if some of its generating capacity can be assumed to be available all the time. Nuclear provides such capacity with no ongoing emissions, and it is doing so safely and at scale around the world.

如果假设电网的部分发电能力可以一直保持可用，那么就很容易提供一个供应可靠的电网。核能在无排放的情况下就能做到这一点，并且其在全世界范围内都能够安全且大量地供电。

 

重难点词汇：

tsunami [tsuːˈnɑːmi] n. 海啸

turmoil [ˈtɜːrmɔɪl] n. 混乱，骚动

puddle [ˈpʌdl] n. 水坑;泥潭

catastrophic [ˌkætəˈstrɑːfɪk] adj. 灾难的;悲惨的

intermittent [ˌɪntərˈmɪtənt] adj. 间歇的;断断续续的

      以上是-2022考研英语经济学人:福岛核泄漏十周年，希望对2022考研考生们，在英语阅读上面有所帮助!祝2022考研顺利!

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