2004年MBA考前冲刺－英语模拟试题及答案(3-4)
Questions 51 to 54 based on the following passage:
Radioactive materials in wide use in the United States
could be turned into weapons terror that would probably
kill few people but would spread panic and produce severe
economic damage, scientists told the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee today.
The materials would not produce nuclear explosions.
Rather, they would be spread using conventional explosives
in so-called dirty bombs. The scientists who testified at
the committee’s hearing today said such weapons were a
potentially serious problem. The most dangerous materials,
they said, are bars of radioactive cobalt (钴) used to
irradiate（辐射） food, medical devices and other products
to sterilize (消毒) them. If turned into fine particles and
dispersed under the right weather conditions, the cobalt
could spread enough radiation to force the abandonment of
an area the size of Manhattan, the scientists said. But
federal and industry officials said such an action with
radioactive cobalt was unlikely because of the intense
radiation to which the person trying to use the weapon
would be exposed and because the material is transported in
secret and kept behind tons of lead and other shielding
while on the road or in use.
Other radioactive materials in tens of thousands of medical
and industrial devices could be used to make weapons that
would leave wide areas with radiation level above
Environmental Protection Agency limits, possibly leading to
temporary evacuation and extremely difficult cleanup.
Scientists at the hearing held to understand these threats
and to device ways of protecting Americans against them
also said that they remained concerned that fissionable(裂
变)material- the fuel for nuclear weapons-and the expertise
needed to use it could be spreading from the former Soviet
Union to terrorist networks, but presented no new evidence
of such leakage.
Dr. Richard Meserve, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, said that all such materials, as well as the
much more
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