CNN News: 华盛顿核废料存储场隧道坍塌 未造成人员伤亡

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，华盛顿州一个隧道发生坍塌。该事故并未造成人员伤亡，不过官方正在竭力迅速修复该隧道，因为这一隧道属于汉福德核废料存储场。坍塌的隧道被覆盖在8英尺深的土壤中。这座隧道建于冷战时期，用于放置核废料罐。
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.
这些核废料被用来生产核武器的一种燃料——钚。实际上，汉福德储存场的一些原料被用来制造了于1945年投放在日本长崎的原子弹，而原子弹的投放导致了日本投降以及二战结束。
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.
钚对人类的毒性非常大。它会引发肺癌、骨癌和其他疾病。所以，在发现坍塌事故后，该工厂的3000名工人被要求在适当的地方避难。有人担心污染可能会通过空气扩散。
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，这一工厂曾发生过泄露事故，但一名发言人表示，这是首次发生隧道坍塌事故。该区域于上世纪90年代中期被封，工人门不清楚为何会发生坍塌。初步测试显示，目前没有证据显示辐射泄漏，也没有证据表明工人受到了辐射。
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.
美国能源部计划用清洁土壤覆盖隧道，于1989年启动的清理该储存场的工作将继续进行。
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.
有关核废料大家应该知道的一件事是，它极难以被储存。核废料要储存在远离人类的地方，同时还要确保以不会让它们泄露到环境中的方式储存。这是因为核废料的放射性可能会持续数千年。
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.
核废料在美国已储存了数十年，但并没有永久的解决方案。核废料存放在美国30多个州的100个储存场中。这令行业评论家们非常担心，他们害怕这些储存场可能易遭到恐怖袭击或易受自然灾难的影响。
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.
多年来，政客们一直在试图找出一个更好的解决核废料的办法，但它已成为一个棘手的问题，毕竟，没有人希望在自家后院建个核废料储存场。