理工类学术英语翻译Text 11 核电的危险

Text 11 核电的危险

RISKS OF NUCLEAR POWER

Bernard L. Cohen, Sc.D.

Professor at the University of Pittsburgh

Radiation

The principal risks associated with nuclear power arise from health effects of radiation. This radiation consists of subatomic particles traveling at or near the velocity of light---186,000 miles per second. They can penetrate deep inside the human body where they can damage biological cells and thereby initiate a cancer. If they strike sex cells, they can cause genetic diseases in progeny.

辐射

与核电相联系的主要危险来自辐射对健康的影响。这种辐射包括亚原子颗粒以光速或接近光速运行——每秒186000英里。它们可以深深穿透到身体内部，在体内它们可以损伤生物细胞，然后引发癌症。如果它们攻击性细胞，它们可以导致子孙后代的基因疾病。

Radiation occurs naturally in our environment; a typical person is, and always has been struck by 15,000 particles of radiation every second from natural sources, and an average medical X-ray involves being struck by 100 billion. While this may seem to be very dangerous, it is not, because the probability for a particle of radiation entering a human body to cause a cancer or a genetic disease is only one chance in 30 million billion (30 quintillion).

辐射在我们环境中自然地发生；通常每个人每秒钟受到来自自然源的15000个粒子的辐射，而一次普通的医疗X光检查则带有1，000亿个粒子的辐射。可能这看起来会非常危险，其实不会，因为一个辐射粒子进入人体引发癌症或基因疾病的可能性是三十拍分之一。

Nuclear power technology produces materials that are active in emitting radiation and are therefore called "radioactive". These materials can come into contact with people principally through small releases during routine plant operation, accidents in nuclear power plants, accidents in transporting radioactive materials, and escape of radioactive wastes from confinement systems. We will discuss these separately, but all of them taken together, with accidents treated probabilistically, will eventually expose the average American to about 0.2% of his exposure from natural radiation. Since natural radiation is estimated to cause about 1% of all cancers, radiation due to nuclear technology should eventually increase our cancer risk by 0.002% (one part in 50,000), reducing our life expectancy by less than one hour. By comparison, our loss of life expectancy from competitive electricity generation technologies, burning coal, oil, or gas, is estimated to range from 3 to 40 days.

核电技术生产的材料可以非常活跃地释放辐射，所以被称为“放射性的”。这些材料主要通过发电厂常规运行时的少量释放物，核电站事故，放射性材料运输事故、以及放射性废料从隔离系统中泄漏而与人体发生接触的。我们将分开讨论这些问题，但是所有这些因素加在一起，从可能性的角度对待这些事故，最终会让普通美国人接触到来自天然辐射0.2%的辐射量。因为自然辐射预计会引发1%的癌症，核技术产生的辐射最终会增加0.002%的患癌几率（5万分之一），减少预期寿命不到1小时。相比之下，因为竞争性的发电技术、燃烧煤、油或气导致的预期寿命损失预计有3到40天。

There has been much misunderstanding on genetic diseases due to radiation. The risks are somewhat less than the cancer risks; for example, among the Japanese A-bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there have been about 400 extra cancer deaths among the 100,000 people in the follow-up group, but there have been no extra genetic diseases among their progeny. Since there is no possible way for the cells in our