The View From Japan's Nuclear 'Hot Zone'

    Modern Geiger counters don't click. As is the case with so many other devices, they have gone digital.  At least that is true for the high-tech¹ Japanese Geiger counters here. But they still measure radiation（放射） exposure in the quaint-sounding "clicks per minute."After spending nearly all of the past six days in the "hot zone" of Fukushima Prefecture, it seemed prudent², while reporting from a radiation screening checkpoint, to see how much clicking my own body would register.
    Arriving at the Koriyama Municipal Gymnasium was akin³ to walking on to the set of a science-fiction movie. Men clad head to toe in white anti-contamination suits calmly guided visitors through the gauntlet. Other "space men" unloaded boxes full of white masks.
    Japanese, young and old, expressed no emotion as a mysterious device rendered their radioactive fate.
    When my turn came the needle began to jump as the man in the space suit scanned my torso. I knew not to become immediately alarmed. After all, with the jump in background radiation levels in the past few days in the prefecture, it was not surprising that I had absorbed some extra radiation.
    I had done an online cram⁴ course in radiation to conclude that even if I had been quite close to the crippled nuclear facility (and I was at least 30 kilometers away at all times), I was unlikely to have picked up more radiation than I would absorb on a trans-Pacific flight - or, at the very worst, a chest X-ray.
    When the Geiger counter descended⁵ to my feet I looked at the meter and my heart jumped. The reading had pinned the needle.
    I noticed a subtle look of surprise in the technician's（技师技术员） eyes - perhaps he was thinking, "I've got a live one!" ( this one is worth special attention ) He switched the meter to a higher scale and intoned that perhaps I should wash my footwear.
    "What is the reading?" I asked in Japanese, with the same nervous voice one might use seeking the results of a biopsy.  He replied, "3,000 cpm [clicks per minute]."CPM is a comparatively crude measurement to determine radiation exposure, calculating the number of atoms in a certain quantity of radioactive material that are detected to have decayed in one minute.
    It was important to put things in journalistic perspective. So I asked, what was the typical reading in Koriyama for a test subject prior to the radiation leakage⁶ from any of the six troubled reactors⁷ at the Fukushima-1 plant?
    The technician replied that it would have been 300 to 600 cpm. He also said it was likely that my boots had picked up the radiation from material falling from the sky in the rain and snow during the past couple of days. By comparison, the reading on my torso peaked around 1,500 cpm.
    I was assured that the current readings, even on my 20-year-old boots, were nothing alarming.（本文由在线英语听力室整理编辑）

1 high-tech   

adj.高科技的

参考例句：

• The economy is in the upswing which makes high-tech services in more demand too.经济在蓬勃发展，这就使对高科技服务的需求量也在加大。
• The quest of a cure for disease with high-tech has never ceased. 人们希望运用高科技治疗疾病的追求从未停止过。

2 prudent   

adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的

参考例句：

• A prudent traveller never disparages his own country.聪明的旅行者从不贬低自己的国家。
• You must school yourself to be modest and prudent.你要学会谦虚谨慎。

3 akin   

adj.同族的，类似的

参考例句：

• She painted flowers and birds pictures akin to those of earlier feminine painters.她画一些同早期女画家类似的花鸟画。
• Listening to his life story is akin to reading a good adventure novel.听他的人生故事犹如阅读一本精彩的冒险小说。

4 cram   

v.填塞，塞满，临时抱佛脚，为考试而学习

参考例句：

• There was such a cram in the church.教堂里拥挤得要命。
• The room's full,we can't cram any more people in.屋里满满的，再也挤不进去人了。

5 descended   

a.为...后裔的，出身于...的

参考例句：

• A mood of melancholy descended on us. 一种悲伤的情绪袭上我们的心头。
• The path descended the hill in a series of zigzags. 小路呈连续的之字形顺着山坡蜿蜒而下。

6 leakage   

n.漏，泄漏；泄漏物；漏出量

参考例句：

• Large areas of land have been contaminated by the leakage from the nuclear reactor.大片地区都被核反应堆的泄漏物污染了。
• The continuing leakage is the result of the long crack in the pipe.这根管子上的那一条裂缝致使渗漏不断。

7 reactors   

起反应的人( reactor的名词复数 )； 反应装置； 原子炉； 核反应堆

参考例句：

• The TMI nuclear facility has two reactors. 三哩岛核设施有两个反应堆。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• The earliest production reactors necessarily used normal uranium as fuel. 最早为生产用的反应堆，必须使用普通铀作为燃料。