Test 1 Pub Talk and the King's English

Test 2 Marrakech

Test 3 Inaugural Address

Test 4 Love Is a Fallacy

Test 5 The Sad Young Men

Test 6 Loving and Hating New York

Test 7 The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas （Excerpts）

Test 8 The Future of the English

Test 9 The Loons

Test 10 The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American

Test 11 Four Laws of Ecology （Part Ⅰ ）

Test 12 Four Laws of Ecology （Part Ⅱ）

Test 13 The Mansion： A Subprime Parable （Excerpts）

Test 14 Faustian Economics

Test 15 Disappearing Through the Skylight

KEY

4. Fortunately， some simple steps can be taken immediately to
make America's waste less hazardous， as the Blue Ribbon Commission
notes. Spent fuel can be moved after a period of cooling from pools
to dry storage in casks that are disaster-and sabotage-resistant
and durable enough to store waste safely for many decades. The
commission suggests that some of these casks be consolidated in
regional， well-guarded interim storage facilities away from
disaster-prone zones until geological repositories open up.
Meanwhile， the commission also recommends that the U.S. government
start a consensus-based process of finding new sites for such
underground disposal facilities， though the commission stops short
of suggesting just where they should be. Transparency is key：
Sweden and Finland recently succeeded in this task in large part
because they made the （honest） case that nuclear waste that remains
above ground poses a much greater threat than buried waste， even to
nearby communities.

5. Most of the attention on the commission's work has rightly
focused on its efforts to create a process that will lead to the
opening of a new Yucca Mountain-like facility But there's another，
often overlooked aspect of its analysis that is equally critical：
how U.S. policy toward nuclear waste can affect the spread of
nuclear weapons around the globe.

6. Nonproliferation campaigners have long warned about a method
of handling nuclear waste called reprocessing， in which waste from
reactors is chemically treated to isolate and remove fissionable
plutonium， which can then be turned into a new fuel， called mixed
oxide. That fuel can then be reused in reactors. In theory，
reprocessing is designed to reduce the amount of waste at large and
increase the efficiency of uranium-reactor fuel； in practice， it is
prohibitively expensive， requiring subsidies to make viable， and
does not obviate the need for the disposal of the massive
quantities of radioactive waste that remain. More importantly，
plutonium separated from nuclear waste during reprocessing can also
be used to create nuclear bombs. Less than 20 Ib. （9 kg） of the
stuff could turn downtown Manhattan into a broiling wasteland of
irradiated rubble.

7. The Blue Ribbon Commission doesn't reach a conclusion on
whether the U.S. should pursue reprocessing， arguing that consensus
on the issue would be "premature." That is a mistake. Reprocessing
is a manifestly dangerous technology. In the 1970s， the U.S.
renounced commercial reprocessing at home and the spread of the
technology abroad because of concerns that it would lead to weapons
proliferation. It should not reverse this policy. The spread of
reprocessing to countries in unstable or nuclear-armed regions
gives them the infrastructure and expertise needed to quickly
develop a bomb should they choose to do so. （And don't think
safeguards imposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency can
stop them. Commercial-scale reprocessing facilities handle so much
plutonium that it is almost impossible for inspectors to keep track
of it all.） The U.S. must send a message： if the country with the
world's largest number of nuclear reactors renounces reprocessing，
it delivers a clear signal to countries newly interested in nuclear
power that the process is not necessary for the future of the
nuclear industry.

……