1、考研英语（阅读）-试卷 174 及答案解析(总分：60.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：6，分数：60.00)1.Section II Reading Comprehension（分数：10.00）_2.Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.（分数：10.00）_The Energy Department has recommended expanding the
2、 amount of nuclear waste that could he stored in an underground repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada to avoid the need for a second dump. It is a sensible proposal that also is an urgent reminder of how little progress has been made in solving one of the most vexing problems of the nuclear age. Te
3、ns of thousands of tons of spent fuel and military waste have been piling up at temporary storage sites around the country while the federal government has struggled, unsuccessfully, to find a long-term solution. Expert groups have long recommended that the nuclear waste should be buried deep underg
4、round in a stable, leak-resistant geological formation that would keep it bottled up for many millenniums. Yucca Mountain, the only site now under consideration, has run into so many technical problems and so much political opposition that its future is uncertain. The site is still awaiting licensin
5、g from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In the 1980s when Congress ordered the Energy Department to look for places to bury long-lived radioactive wastes, it visualized two underground repositories one in the West and one in the Eastto spread the burden fairly. Congress eventually chose one site i
6、n Nevada, which lacked the political clout at the time to push it elsewhere. The only concession to Nevada was that no more than 70,000 metric tons could be stored at Yucca Mountain until a second repository was in operation. The amount of spent reactor fuel and military waste now stored at producti
7、on sites and waiting for permanent disposal is expected to reach that limit by 2010. The Energy Department now has recommended that the statutory limit be eliminated so that consideration of a second repository can be deferred. Without specifying any particular capacity, the report notes that Yucca
8、Mountain could physically accommodate at least three times the statutory limit. It would make sense to expand Yucca Mountain rather than undertake the arduous and controversial process of evaluating sites in other states. The political tides are running against the Yucca Mountain site. During a prim
9、ary debate in Las Vegas, Barack Obama pledged to Nevada voters that he would “end the notion of Yucca Mountain“. A currently powerful Nevada Congressional delegation also is pushing to kill off the project. Our hope is that opponents of the repository will wait for a verdict from the Nuclear Regulat
10、ory Commission before prejudging the site as unacceptable. Nuclear waste is piling up and the country needs to find a safe place to store it.（分数：10.00）(1).The Energy Department is inclined to_.（分数：2.00）A.restrict the amount of nuclear waste producedB.store more nuclear waste in Nevada“s repositoryC.
11、seek another repository for increased nuclear wasteD.remind us of the difficulty to build a new repository(2).According to the text, Yucca Mountain is_.（分数：2.00）A.only a temporary site for storing nuclear wasteB.a desirable site in the U. S. to store nuclear wasteC.a geologically suitable site to st
12、ore nuclear wasteD.no longer a proper place for storing nuclear waste(3).Nevada was chosen as one site for storing nuclear waste on account of（分数：2.00）A.the urgent need for a repositoryB.few technical problems it ran intoC.the absence of suitable substitutesD.little political opposition it met with(
13、4).It seems that Barack Obama objected to_.（分数：2.00）A.waiving the statutory limit for Nevada“s repositoryB.evaluating other sites for storing radioactive wasteC.considering a second repository for nuclear wasteD.specifying a limit for Yucca Mountain repository(5).The author is anxious about_.（分数：2.0
14、0）A.the pledge of Obama to Nevada votersB.the uncertain future of Yucca MountainC.the permanent disposal of nuclear wasteD.the limited storage capacity of a repositorySeveral weeks ago. three of the country“s most respected institutions of higher learning, Harvard, Princeton, and the University of V
15、irginia, announced that they were embarking on a nationwide campaign to recruit more poor students. Consider the efforts to recruit poor students. Harvard, Princeton, and U. Va. are reacting to a troubling pattern; The percentage of low-income students at elite colleges and universities is quite low
16、. Precise figures are hard to come by, but a 2004 report indicated that at the most selective colleges, only 3 percent of the students were from the poorest sector of society, and only 10 percent from the bottom half. Perhaps even more troubling, the percentage of low-income students on some campuse
17、s has declined over the last decade. Ten years ago at the University of Virginia, for example, more than 10 percent of the students came from low-income households; today, less than 7 percent do. Many college campuses are becoming the province of the economic elite, where the very essence of the Ame
18、rican Dreamthat a child from a modest home can, by dint of hard work, climb as far as talent will take him or herseems to be fading from view. The effort by these three institutions to recruit more poor students is laudable, but it“s also like treating the symptom rather than the disease. The real p
19、roblem is not that there are bus loads of qualified poor students every year who just decide to give Harvard a pass. It“s that there are far too few poor students who are even remotely prepared to attend Harvard. Stepping up the recruitment of poor students might create a more diverse campus and the
20、refore benefit colleges and universities, as well as the lucky few poor students who attend them. But why don“t college presidents also talk publicly about the fact that so few poor students seem prepared to attend college, let alone an elite university? Better still, why not talk about what to do a
21、bout that fact? The failure of college and university presidents to speak out on this issue is symptomatic of a broader problem: These leaders are pretty much invisible in the public sphere and, most jarringly, in the debates and discussions about K12 education. To be sure, college presidents are bu
22、sy people, with complicated institutions to guide and plenty of problems of their own. But they are also leaders in the larger enterprise of education, and they are in an unparalleled position to make a valuable contribution to the discussion of what should happen to students before they graduate fr
23、om high school. Perhaps instead of just focusing on the bottom line, they should be thinking more about the broader picture.（分数：10.00）(1).It is_ for prestigious universities to recruit more poor students.（分数：2.00）A.normalB.sensibleC.incredibleD.admirable(2).It seems that the American Dream_.（分数：2.00
24、）A.is nothing but an illusionB.means little to poor childrenC.is cherished by all AmericansD.keeps on inspiring poor children(3).The “disease“ in “treating the symptom rather than the disease“ refers to the fact that_.（分数：2.00）A.there are few qualified poor students for universities to recruitB.poor
25、 students value most the opportunity of attending universitiesC.some prestigious universities decide to recruit more poor studentsD.some elite universities are not well-prepared to recruit poor students(4).Recruiting more poor students is beneficial to_.（分数：2.00）A.the realization of American DreamB.
26、the discussion about K-12 educationC.the creation of a diverse student bodyD.the prestige of colleges and universities(5).fn the author“s opinion, college presidents should_ .（分数：2.00）A.contribute more to the guidance of their institutionsB.focus on the rapid improvement of higher educationC.be conc
27、erned about the performance of poor studentsD.participate in the discussion of fundamental educationOne of the oft-repeated mantras of the global warming crowd is that there is no longer any debate in the scientific community about the threat of global warming. That is just not true. While there are
28、 many scientists who firmly believe global warming is real and it is a threat, there are many other scientists who have serious reservations about that judgment. One who sticks out in the debate on global warming is Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg. Five years ago, Lomborg who views himself as an e
29、nvironmentalist, ignited a firestorm of controversy with his book The Skeptical Environmentalist. In it, Lomborg pointed out, as he has continued to explain since, “that actually a lot of the things we are doing to the environment are making it better“. On global warming, he told the online site Tec
30、hCentralStation; “Global warming is an important issue and one which we should address. But there is no sense of proportion either in environmental terms, or indeed in terms of the other issues facing the world.“ According to Lomborg, millions die each year from lack of clean drinking water and prop
31、er sanitation and indoor air pollution kills millions more, but a warmer world poses no such threat. “One of the top climate change economists has modelledand several papers that came out a couple of weeks ago essentially point out -that climate change will probably mean fewer deaths, not more death
32、s. It is estimated that climate change by about 2050 will mean about 800,000 fewer deaths. “ Another critic of the standard model of global warming is MIT professor of meteorology Richard S. Lindzen. A giant in climate science, Lindzen has published literally hundreds of scientific papers. In an op-
33、ed in the Wall Street Journal in 2001, writing about a National Academy of Sciences report on climate change in which he participated, Lindzen noted: “We are quite confident(1)that global mean temperature is about 0. 5 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago;(2)that atmospheric levels of ca
34、rbon dioxide have risen over the past two centuries; and(3)that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth(one of many, the most important being water vapor and clouds). Butand I cannot stress this enough we are not in a position to confidently attribute past clima
35、te change to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the future. That is to say, contrary to media impressions, agreement with the three basic statements tells us almost nothing relevant to policy discussions. “（分数：10.00）(1).The author argues that the debate over the threat of glob
36、al warming_.（分数：2.00）A.is going to be closed spontaneouslyB.is neither conclusive nor disappearingC.has become more violent than ever beforeD.has been provoked by the skeptics of global warming(2).By saying “But there is no sense of proportion either . . . or . . . “, Lomborg means that_.（分数：2.00）A.
37、the threat posed by global warming is nothing but a nonsenseB.the issue of global warming has attained important proportionsC.there are issues assuming larger proportions than global warmingD.the proportion assumed by the issue of global warming is improper(3).Lomborg argues that global warming_.（分数
38、：2.00）A.may be something beneficial to human beingsB.should be addressed by environmental scientistsC.has ignited a heated controversy among scientistsD.is important both statistically and environmentally(4).The top climate change economist mentioned in the third paragraph_.（分数：2.00）A.challenges Lom
39、borg with his optimistic prediction about futureB.is inclined to disagree with Lomborg“s view of global warmingC.is as skeptical of the threat of global warming as LomborgD.confirms his agreement with Lomborg on global warming(5).It can be inferred from the text that Lindzen_.（分数：2.00）A.is much skep
40、tical of the threat of global warmingB.is skeptically critical of the view held by LomborgC.takes a hopeful view on the issue of global warmingD.attributes climate change exclusively to human activitiesIf the idea of duty was obsolete, how would society function? Nobody would report for work, nobody
41、 would bother about paying their bills, and no one would even bother about their friends or loved ones. Without duty, there would be no commitments, no boundaries, and no relationships! and if this ever happens, if duty ever vanishes completely from the earth, what the heck would happen to humanity,
42、 to civilization? Well, first things first. What is duty? Duty, I believe, is a desire to work, to keep a commitment. Duly is to commitment what conscience is to morals; duty is the basic instinct and need to fulfil an earlier promise and commitment, and failure to do so would result in a sharp pang
43、 of guilt, just the same as conscience. Duty is what makes people honour their commitments, whether in their relationships, jobs, verbal promises, or self-set goals. Therefore, this argument can be explained in two levels: firstly, duty cannot be obsolete as it is a primal emotion, and secondly, if
44、it was obsolete, we wouldn“t even be having this debate as society would degenerate rapidly. Right. Firstly, duty can never be obsolete. Why? Duty is an emotion, just like your conscience. It is similar, and in fact probably can be considered a variation of guilt. Duty is basically the desire to ful
45、fill commitments, and the ensuing guilt that occurs upon failure to do so. Therefore, as duty is a contextual variation of guilt, and guilt is an emotion, duty can then be considered an emotion. And can emotions ever become “obsolete“? Can anger be obsolete? Or happiness? Or maybe you“ve heard of “o
46、bsolete sadness“? Emotions are a primal attribute of humans, just like any other physical or mental attributes unique to not only humans, but any sentient being, albeit maybe on a larger or smaller scale depending on intelligence. And as a primal force, emotions can NEVER become obsolete. Secondly,
47、assuming that duty is obsolete, how can we even hold a proper debate? Duty is what causes humans to honour commitments, commitments are what cause humans to work on a daily routine, and work is what makes society progress.“ Without commitment, whether monetary or obligatory, no one would even bother
48、 working a day in their lives. And without any productive work occurring in our society, civilization would soon degenerate into its primordial states and there“s the end of life as we know it.（分数：10.00）(1).In the absence of duty,_.（分数：2.00）A.the society would be unable to function normallyB.a good
49、work ethic would be quite empty of meaningC.the freedom of speech and action would be removedD.human relationship would remain natural and normal(2).The author argues that duty_.（分数：2.00）A.is a trait inherited from predecessorsB.is likely to cause a sharp pang of guiltC.makes people pledge to his normal lifeD.means respecting previous c
