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  3. The Energy Department has recommended expanding the amount of nuclear waste that could he stored in an underground repository at

The Energy Department has recommended expanding the amount of nuclear waste that could he stored in an underground repository at

admin2016-08-02  60
问题     The Energy Department has recommended expanding the amount of nuclear waste that could he stored in an underground repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada to avoid the need for a second dump. It is a sensible proposal that also is an urgent reminder of how little progress has been made in solving one of the most vexing problems of the nuclear age.
    Tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel and military waste have been piling up at temporary storage sites around the country while the federal government has struggled, unsuccessfully, to find a long-term solution.
    Expert groups have long recommended that the nuclear waste should be buried deep underground in a stable, leak-resistant geological formation that would keep it bottled up for many millenniums. Yucca Mountain, the only site now under consideration, has run into so many technical problems and so much political opposition that its future is uncertain. The site is still awaiting licensing from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
    In the 1980s when Congress ordered the Energy Department to look for places to bury long-lived radioactive wastes, it visualized two underground repositories one in the West and one in the East—to spread the burden fairly. Congress eventually chose one site in Nevada, which lacked the political clout at the time to push it elsewhere.
    The only concession to Nevada was that no more than 70,000 metric tons could be stored at Yucca Mountain until a second repository was in operation. The amount of spent reactor fuel and military waste now stored at production sites and waiting for permanent disposal is expected to reach that limit by 2010.
    The Energy Department now has recommended that the statutory limit be eliminated so that consideration of a second repository can be deferred. Without specifying any particular capacity, the report notes that Yucca Mountain could physically accommodate at least three times the statutory limit.
    It would make sense to expand Yucca Mountain rather than undertake the arduous and controversial process of evaluating sites in other states. The political tides are running against the Yucca Mountain site. During a primary debate in Las Vegas, Barack Obama pledged to Nevada voters that he would "end the notion of Yucca Mountain".
    A currently powerful Nevada Congressional delegation also is pushing to kill off the project.
    Our hope is that opponents of the repository will wait for a verdict from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before prejudging the site as unacceptable. Nuclear waste is piling up and the country needs to find a safe place to store it.
Nevada was chosen as one site for storing nuclear waste on account of
选项 A、the urgent need for a repository
B、few technical problems it ran into
C、the absence of suitable substitutes
D、little political opposition it met with
答案D
解析 根据第四段最后一句“Congress eventually chose one site in Nevada，which lacked the politicalclout at the time to push it elsewhere”，D应为答案。
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