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  3. Tomorrow evening about 20 million Americans will be shown, on their television screens, how easy it is to steal plutonium (钚) an

Tomorrow evening about 20 million Americans will be shown, on their television screens, how easy it is to steal plutonium (钚) an

admin2011-01-02  43
问题    Tomorrow evening about 20 million Americans will be shown, on their television screens, how easy it is to steal plutonium (钚) and produce "the most terrifying blackmail weapon ever devised" -- a homemade atomic bomb.
   They will be told that no commercial nuclear plant in the United States -- and probably in the world -- is adequately protected against a well planned armed attack by terrorists, and that there is enough information on public record to guide a nuclear thief not only to the underground rooms of nuclear plants where plutonium is stored, but also to tell him how the doors of those underground rooms are designed.
   The hour-long television programme, "The Plutonium Connection", makes its point by showing how a 20-year-old student of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in five weeks designed an atomic bomb composed of plutonium and parts from a hardware store.
   The young man, whose identity is being kept secret for fear he may be kidnapped by terrorists, is quoted as saying: "I was pretty surprised about how easy it is to design a bomb. When I was working on my design, I kept thinking there’s got to be more to it than this, but actually there isn’t. It’s simple."
   The student worked alone, using information he obtained from science libraries open to the public. The television programme, produced for non-commercial stations across the country by a Boston educational station, shows how quantities of other "secret" information are available to anyone.
   The Atomic Energy Commission’s public reading room in Washington is described by the narrator as "the first place a bomb-designer would visit when he was planning his plutonium theft. On file there and freely available are the plans of every civilian nuclear installation in the country."
   The programme seems certain to create enormous controversy -- not only over the lack of nuclear safeguards, But also over the morality of appointing the student to design a bomb and the wisdom of drawing attention to the ways that a nuclear thief can work.
   Even an official of Public Broadcasting System, which is distributing the TV programme, confessed to uneasiness: "It’s a terribly important subject, and people should know about the dangers, but I can’t help wondering if the programme won’t give someone ideas."
   "The Plutonium Connection" explains, for example, that the security systems of nuclear plants were all designed to prevent sabotage by perhaps one or agents of some foreign power. But now this appears less of a hazard than the possibility of an attack by an armed band of terrorists with dedicated disregard for their own lives.
   The programme discusses two major plutonium reprocessing plants in the US -- one already operating in Oklahoma, one being completed in South Carolina -- neither of which has more than a handful of armed guards to supplement the alarms,  fences and gun-detectors that Government security requires. Both are in such remote areas that it would take at least 45 minutes for a sizeable force to be assembled, if there were an attack.
   An official of the South Carolina plant -- a joint operation of Allied Chemical, Gulf Oil and Royal Dutch Shell -- admits to television viewers that the "system we’ve designed would probably not prevent" a band of about 12 armed terrorists from entering.
   Stealing plutonium is even easier, the programme suggests. Despite constant survey of all materials on the list, there are inevitably particles of plutonium unaccounted for -- about I lb a month at the Oklahoma plant, owned by the KerrMcGee oil company, which in a year adds up to enough to make an atomic bomb. It is suggested that stealing would be even easier if instrument technicians were unscrupulous enough to alter their measuring devices.
   The television film also shows radioactive fuel being transported to nuclear processing plants in commercial armoured cars. As safety measure, US drivers of such cars are ordered to contact headquarters by radio telephone every two hours. But the equipment is "cumbersome and unreliable", and in difficult terrain there are radio black out areas.
   The programmer ends with a warning from Dr. Theodore Taylor, a former Atomic Energy Commission officer who has long contended that any person of modest technical ability could make an atomic bomb: "If we don’t get this problem under international control within the next five or six years, there is a good chance that it will be permanently out of control."
The main danger discussed in the passage is from ______.
选项 A、students making their own atomic bombs.
B、foreign spies stealing secrets
C、terrorists stealing plutonium and making their own bombs
D、technicians stealing plutonium
答案A
解析 该题问：在这篇文章中讨论的主要危险来自于哪里?A项意为“学生自制原子弹”；B项意为“外国间谍盗窃秘密”；C项意为“恐怖主义者偷钚并自制炸弹”；D项意为“技术员偷钚”。在本文的第八段及最后一段都有相关线索。第八段中谈到：“一位公众电台体系的官员坦率地说出他的不安：这是一个非常重要的课题，人们应当知道其危险性，可是这节目是否给人这种概念，我不由得纳闷”。最后一段谈到：电视节目主持人以泰勒博士，前原子能委员会官员的告诫作为节目结束语。泰勒长期以来坚持说任何具备中等技能的人都能制造原子弹。其告诫说：“在未来的五、六年中，我们如果不把此问题置于国际控制之下，那么就有很大的可能，它将永远不能控制。”因此判断四个选项中A项为正确选项。
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