One year has been passed since Japan's earthquake and tsunami

This Sunday is the first anniversary(周年纪念）of the major earthquake and tsunami(海啸)in Japan. It led to one of the worst nuclear accidents ever.

 

  The quake struck near the east coast of Hongshu, Japan's main island. It was one of the most powerufl ever recorded-- a magnitude(巨大， 重要性，星等) nine. A wall of water struck the land.

 

   Twenty thousand people died, mostly from the tsunami. More than two hundred fifty thousand buildings were destroyed. Nearly four hundred thousand people were left homeless.

 

   Some rebuilding  has begun. But many people are still in temporary housing.

  

 

   Three reactors(起反应的人，反应装置，原子炉，核反应堆）at the Fukushima-Daichi unclear power station suffered meltdowns(彻底垮台). During the crisis, some government offcials even considered urging people to leave Tokyo. VOA's Steve Herman reported on the disaster.

 

 

    Steve Herman: " I was among those near the atomic power(原子能) facility(设备) on the fifteenth of March when, unknow  to the public, an estimated ten million becquerels per hour of radioactive substances spewed from the trhee crippled reactors. For days, I and millions of people in Japan absorbed (专心致志地，全神贯注地) significantly(意味深长地，值得注目地) higher doses of radiation than we normally would have been exposed to.我和数百万日本人民吸收的辐射量比通常情况下要明显高了很多。

 

 

   Radioactive material spread over an area that includes some of Japan's most valuable framland. Officials say eighty-one thousand hectares(公顷) of farmland are too heavily irradiated to let farmers plant rice. Vegetable, fruit and daily farms also are affected.

 

 

    Japan's government has been seeking advice from foreign scientists about how to reduce the radiation levels.Some of the scientists are from the former Soviet Union, site of the nineteen ninety-six Chernobyl nuclear accident.

 

 

 

    No one has died from radiation as a result of the accident in Japan. Some scientists and government officials say rediation levels even close to disable power plant are safe. But since the disaster, officials have faced growing among the Japanese public.

 

 

   Japan also finds itself facing huge costs for cleaning up after the nuclear disaster and for paying damages to victims.(牺牲者，受害者，受灾者) Before the accident, nuclear power produced thirty percent of Japan's energy needs.Now some people think the accident will be the end of the nuclear power industry in the world's third largest economy.

 

 

   Thorne Lay is a seismologist(地震学家） with the University of California, Santa Cruz. He says engineers had underestimated(对...估计不足，低估） the chances that a great wave could drown the emergency power systems at the Japanese plant.

 

 

     THORNE LAY: " Those are mostly design weaknesses that a good engineering think-through(思考后得出结论) might say. let's put the backup power at very high elevations(提升，提高，晋级，海拔).so that it could not possibly get drowned out.(淹没)

 

     Mr. Lay says scientists are better able to predict earthquake risks in some areas than they were in the past. Still , he says, they cannot provide decision makers with all the answers.

 

     THORNE LAY:"  We will try to our best to give early warning if that's possible and set up emergency response systems. but ultimately最后，最终 individuals have to prepare themselves.

 

      In the United States, a nuclear plant is being build in Georgia. This is the coutry's first new one since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania in nineteen seventy-nine.

 

     Safetly is not the only concern. The cost of building a nuclear plant and producing eletricity from it is much higher than other sources of power.