美全面评估核电厂安全

核能管制委员会表示，这类问题已经得到改正。

The commissioners acknowledged there are lessons to be learned from the Japanese nuclear crisis. Jaczko highlighted one lesson in particular.

委员会主席杰兹科承认从日本的核危机里学到一些教训。杰兹科特别提到其中的一项教训。

“Our traditional approach has always been to assume a single incident at a single reactor," he said. "Clearly Fukushima-Daiichi showed us that we have to consider the possibility of multiple units at a single site, perhaps multiple spent fuel pools being affected at the same time.”

他说：“我们传统的作法一直是认为，在单一的反应炉发生单一的事故。但是福岛第一核电厂事故很明确地显示，我们必须考虑到在单一地点多个反应炉可能同时发生问题，可能多个冷却池水同时受到影响。”

The hearing exposed divided opinions in the Senate on the wisdom and utility of employing nuclear power in the United States. Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee is a strong supporter.

这次听证会也曝露了参议员们对美国使用核能到底是否正确的分歧，来自田纳西州的共和党参议员亚力山大是核能发电的强烈支持者。

“The subject in America today is jobs. We want jobs (and) we have got to have large amounts of reliable, low-cost electricity," said Alexander. "Seventy percent of our carbon-free, sulfur-free, nitrogen-free, mercury-free electricity comes from nuclear plants.”

亚力山大参议员说：“这件事在今日的美国来说是工作问题。我们需要工作，同时我们也必须得到大量可靠而且低成本的电力。我们所有不排放二氧化碳，不排放硫化物，不排放氮，不排放铅的电力，其中有百分之是七十来自核能发电。”

Democratic Senator Jeff Merkeley of Oregon is far less enthusiastic.

但是，来自奥勒冈州的民主党籍参议员莫克里却对核能发电不以为然。

“I have a lot of doubts about nuclear power being able to be competitive, taking into account costs, potential terror threats, natural disasters, and human error," he said. "But I also think it is very important to look at all options as we wrestle with ways to generate non-carbon power.”

莫克里参议员说：“如果计算进建造成本，潜在的恐怖威胁，天然灾害和人为过失，我非常怀疑核电厂具有竞争力。所以，当我们致力寻求办法去生产不排碳的发电厂之际，我认为很重要的是考虑到所有的选择。”

A political battle has raged for years over what to do with America’s spent nuclear fuel. A site in sparsely-populated Nevada was designated as a nuclear repository in the 1980s. Billions of dollars have been spent to develop the Yucca Mountain repository, but under President Barack Obama the project has been mothballed, with no replacement site identified to date.

至于如何处理美国的核废料，多年来已经成为美国的政治争论议题。在上个世纪80年代，内华达州一处人烟稀少的地区被指定作为核废料的贮存地点。为了修建这个犹加山核废料贮存库，已经花费了数十亿美元，但是在奥巴马总统主政下，这项计划又遭到冻结。到目前为止，还没有选出其他取代的地点。