Nuclear power"s danger to health, safety, and even life itself can be summed up in one word: radiation. Nuclear radiation has a certain mystery about it, partly because it cannot be detected by human senses. It can"t be seen or heard, or touched, or tasted, even though it may be all around There are other things like that. For example, radio waves are all around us but we can"t detect them, sense them, without a radio receiver. Similarly, we can"t sense radioactivity without a radiation detector. But unlike common radio waves, nuclear radiation is not harmless to human beings and other living things.
At very high levels, radiation can kill an animal or human being outright by killing masses of cells in vital organs. But even the lowest level of radiation can do serious damage. There is no level of radiation that is completely safe. If the radiation does not hit anything important, the damage may not be significant. This is the case when only a few cells are hit, and if they are killed outright. Your body will replace the dead cells with healthy ones. But if the few cells are only damaged, and if they reproduce themselves, you may be in trouble. They reproduce themselves in a deformed way. They can grow into cancer. Sometimes this does not show up for many years.
This is another reason for some of the mystery about nuclear radiation. Serious damage can be done without the victim being aware at the time that damage has occurred. A person can be irradiated and feel fine, then die of cancer five, ten, or twenty years later as a result. Or a child can be born weak or liable to serious illness as a result of radiation absorbed by its grandparents.
Radiation can hurt us. We must know the truth.
单选题
According to the passage, the danger of nuclear power lies in______.
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】[解析] 由文章第一段“Nuclear power"s danger to health, safety, and even life itself can be summed up in one word: radiation.”可知，核能对人类健康、安全甚至生命造成的威胁可归纳为一个词：核辐射。故选C。
单选题
Radiation can cause serious consequences even at the lowest level______.
单选题
The underlined word "significant" in Paragraph 3 most probably means ______.
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】[解析] 由文章第三段第四句话“If the radiation does not hit anything important, the damage may not be significant.”可知，如果核辐射没有破坏重要的细胞，这种伤害可能不是致命的。significant意为“致命的”，与fatal(致命的)意思相近。故选A。
单选题
Radiation can hurt us in the way that it can ______.