CNN 2011-03-21

You've made it to the end of the week with CNN Student News. Thank you so much for joining us. From the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia, I'm Carl Azuz.

First up, water is the key ingredient in efforts to avoid a nuclear meltdown at a power plant in Japan. The workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are trying to cool down the fuel rods inside the nuclear reactors¹. The normal cooling systems aren't working. So, engineers are using fire trucks and police water cannons², like you see in this animation³ here, to try to attack the problem from the ground. Using military helicopters to drop water from the sky. Thursday, authorities said these efforts had been "somewhat effective." That was based on the steam coming out of the reactors and on the lower levels of radioactivity around the plant.

But radiation is there. The workers who are at the site have full-body hazardous⁴ material suits on. But that protective clothing isn't very effective at actually stopping the radiation that these workers are being exposed to. One way of measuring nuclear radiation is in units called millisieverts. Radiation levels at these plants have spiked⁵ to higher levels in an hour than people naturally come into contact with in a lifetime. These guys are experts, though. They work around nuclear reactors. They know exactly what the dangers are. The fact that they're willing -- in some cases volunteering -- to stay at the power plant, to try to prevent a meltdown, that's why they're being called heroes.

The massive earthquake that started all of this hit about a week ago, and Japan is still feeling aftershocks. Watch what happened while CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta was talking with Kiran Chetry from CNN's American Morning.

We're feeling an aftershock right now, Kiran. I'll just tell you the, I don't know if you saw that at all, but things moving around a bit on us even as I'm talking to you. These aftershocks have come quite frequently. It's still continuing here. OK. I think we're all good.

OK, we're going to bring in Steve Kastenbaum. He's a national correspendent for CNN Radio who just got back from Japan. Steve, you were in Japan right after the earthquake happened. Talk to us about the wreckage⁶ you saw.

It was pretty amazing. The earthquake itself really didn't cause a lot of damage in much of the northeast region of Japan. It was the tsunami⁷ that really caused a lot of the problems that we saw the pictures of. You're looking at some images of a small fishing and farming village called Ishiyami that I was in, north of the city of Sendai. And you can just see what the tsunami did to this area. It just barreled through there with a tremendous amount of force, literally⁸ lifting houses right off their foundations and dropping them on top of other homes. It was almost wiped off the map.

And Steve, afterward⁹, in the days that followed, we've heard so much about this radiation from the nuclear plant in Japan, and we know that a lot of folks are trying to get out. You were in Tokyo. What did you see at the airport there?

We saw massive crowds of people. The lines literally snaking through the terminals at Narita Airport in Tokyo. You're looking at some pictures I took on the day that we left. Look at that. The lines just went on for as far as the eye could see, and it took forever to check in to the flights there. And the terminals were extremely crowded, yet it was a very orderly place. Nobody was complaining, you didn't see looks of anxiety on people's faces. People just wanted to get out of Tokyo by any means possible. They would take seats on flights that would get them out of the country and it proceeded in a very orderly fashion. There really wasn't a panic at all. Tokyo, the streets of Tokyo, were unusually quiet and traffic was very light for Tokyo, a city that's known for having incredible traffic jams. So, people were definitey staying off the streets, most likely because of their fears about the potential for radiation contamination.

Steve Kastenbaum from CNN Radio, thanks very much for speaking to us today on CNN Student News.

1 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。

2 cannons   

n.加农炮，大炮，火炮( cannon的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Cannons bombarded enemy lines. 大炮轰击了敌军阵地。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• One company had been furnished with six cannons. 某连队装备了六门大炮。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 animation   

n.活泼，兴奋，卡通片／动画片的制作

参考例句：

• They are full of animation as they talked about their childhood.当他们谈及童年的往事时都非常兴奋。
• The animation of China made a great progress.中国的卡通片制作取得很大发展。

4 hazardous   

adj.(有)危险的，冒险的；碰运气的

参考例句：

• These conditions are very hazardous for shipping.这些情况对航海非常不利。
• Everybody said that it was a hazardous investment.大家都说那是一次危险的投资。

5 spiked   

adj.有穗的；成锥形的；有尖顶的

参考例句：

• The editor spiked the story. 编辑删去了这篇报道。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They wondered whether their drinks had been spiked. 他们有些疑惑自己的饮料里是否被偷偷搀了烈性酒。 来自辞典例句

6 wreckage   

n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏

参考例句：

• They hauled him clear of the wreckage.他们把他从形骸中拖出来。
• New states were born out of the wreckage of old colonial empires.新生国家从老殖民帝国的废墟中诞生。

7 tsunami   

n.海啸

参考例句：

• Powerful quake sparks tsunami warning in Japan.大地震触发了日本的海啸预警。
• Coastlines all around the Indian Ocean inundated by a huge tsunami.大海啸把印度洋沿岸地区都淹没了。

8 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

9 afterward   

adv.后来；以后

参考例句：

• Let's go to the theatre first and eat afterward. 让我们先去看戏，然后吃饭。
• Afterward,the boy became a very famous artist.后来，这男孩成为一个很有名的艺术家。