 generates some doubts about its efficiency.

 constitutes a real threat to national security.

 raises severe concerns about potential accidents.

 provokes negative reactions among environmentalists. 

A expressão "has a lot going for it" é usada para afirmar que algo tem muito a oferecer, possui muito a seu favor. Nesse sentido, o trecho "Nuclear power has a lot going for it" carrega a ideia de que a energia nuclear tem muito a seu favor, ou seja, possui muitas qualidades vantajosas ("many advantageous qualities"). Alternativa correta: Letra (A)

1 President Joe Biden has set ambitious goals for
 fighting climate change: To cut U.S. carbon emissions
 in half by 2030 and to have a net-zero carbon economy
 by 2050. The plan requires electricity generation – the
 easiest economic sector to green, analysts say – to
 be carbon-free by 2035.

2 A few figures from the U.S. Energy Information
 Administration (EIA) illustrate the challenge. In
 2020 the United States generated about four trillion
 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Some 60 percent of that
 came from burning fossil fuels, mostly natural gas, in
 some 10,000 generators, large and small, around the
 country. All of that electricity will need to be replaced -
 and more, because demand for electricity is expected
 to rise, especially if we power more cars with it.

3 Renewable energy sources like solar and
 wind have grown faster than expected; together
 with hydroelectric, they surpassed coal for the first
 time ever in 2019 and now produce 20 percent of
 U.S. electricity. In February the EIA projected that
 renewables were on track to produce more than 40
 percent by 2050 - remarkable growth, perhaps, but
 still well short of what’s needed to decarbonize the
 grid by 2035 and forestall the climate crisis.

4 This daunting challenge has recently led some
 environmentalists to reconsider an alternative they
 had long been wary of: nuclear power.

5 Nuclear power has a lot going for it. Its carbon
 footprint is equivalent to wind, less than solar, and
 orders of magnitude less than coal. Nuclear power
 plants take up far less space on the landscape than
 solar or wind farms, and they produce power even
 at night or on calm days. In 2020 they generated as
 much electricity in the U.S. as renewables did, a fifth
 of the total.

6 But debates rage over whether nuclear should be
 a big part of the climate solution in the U.S. The majority
 of American nuclear plants today are approaching
 the end of their design life, and only one has been
 built in the last 20 years. Nuclear proponents are
 now banking on next-generation designs, like small,
 modular versions of conventional light-water reactors,
 or advanced reactors designed to be safer, cheaper,
 and more flexible.

7 “We’ve innovated so little in the past half-century,
 there’s a lot of ground to gain,” says Ashley Finan,
 the director of the National Reactor Innovation Center
 at the Idaho National Laboratory. Yet an expansion
 of nuclear power faces some serious hurdles, and
 the perennial concerns about safety and long-lived
 radioactive waste may not be the biggest: Critics
 also say nuclear reactors are simply too expensive
 and take too long to build to be of much help with the
 climate crisis. 

8 While environmental opposition may have been
 the primary force hindering nuclear development in
 the 1980s and 90s, now the biggest challenge may
 be costs. Few nuclear plants have been built in the
 U.S. recently because they are very expensive to
 build here, which makes the price of their energy high.

9 Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear
 science and engineering at MIT, led a group of
 scientists who recently completed a two-year study
 examining the future of nuclear energy in the U.S.
 and western Europe. They found that “without cost
 reductions, nuclear energy will not play a significant
 role” in decarbonizing the power sector.

10 “In the West, the nuclear industry has substantially
 lost its ability to build large plants,” Buongiorno says,
 pointing to Southern Company’s effort to add two new
 reactors to Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia.
 They have been under construction since 2013, are
 now billions of dollars over budget - the cost has more
 than doubled - and years behind schedule. In France,
 ranked second after the U.S. in nuclear generation, a
 new reactor in Flamanville is a decade late and more
 than three times over budget.

11 “We have clearly lost the know-how to build
 traditional gigawatt-scale nuclear power plants,”
 Buongiorno says. Because no new plants were built
 in the U.S. for decades, he and his colleagues found,
 the teams working on a project like Vogtle haven’t
 had the learning experiences needed to do the job
 efficiently. That leads to construction delays that drive
 up costs.

12 Elsewhere, reactors are still being built at lower
 cost, “largely in places where they build projects on
 budget, and on schedule,” Finan explains. China and
 South Korea are the leaders. (To be fair, several of
 China’s recent large-scale reactors have also had
 cost overruns and delays.)

13 “The cost of nuclear power in Asia has been a
 quarter, or less, of new builds in the West,” Finan says.
 Much lower labor costs are one reason, according
 to both Finan and the MIT report, but better project
 management is another.

O verbo modal may, presente no fragmento destacado, é comumente utilizado para tratar de possibilidades – ou seja, refere-se a algo que pode ser ou acontecer. Neste trecho, may está em sua forma negativa, expressando, portanto, a possibilidade de algo não ser ou acontecer. Assim, tendo em vista o fragmento em questão, may not be expressa a ideia de que a preocupação citada pode não ser a maior de todas. Como se trata de possibilidade (possibility), a alternativa correta, nesta questão, é a Letra (A).

 their cost has more than doubled in European countries.

 their construction faces constant delays that increase costs.

 most of the teams working on the projects are effectively trained.

 a group of MIT scientists has lost the expertise to build these plants.

 new nuclear plants are difficult to build because of complex Asian technologies.

Como se observa nos parágrafos 9, 10 e 11, Jacopo Buongiorno aponta a dificuldade, por parte de indústrias nucleares, de construir grandes instalações. De acordo com Buongiorno, o atraso na construção de novos reatores provoca o aumento dos custos para a elaboração das instalações, como a alternativa (B) indica.

 clarify that China has also faced problems with the construction of large-scale nuclear reactors.

 praise China’s capacity of building large-scale nuclear reactors fast and effectively.

 explain that China is more efficient that South Korea when building large-scale nuclear reactors.

 support the view that China and South Korea can build projects on budget and on schedule.

 discuss the reasons why China and South Korea can build nuclear reactors at a lower cost.

O parágrafo 12 evidencia que, apesar de ser uma das líderes na construção de reatores a um custo mais baixo, a China também enfrenta problemas em seus reatores de alta escala - como atrasos e excessos. Nesse sentido, a alternativa (A) aponta corretamente a ideia do trecho destacado.

 both Finan and the MIT report are absolutely wrong in their conclusions.

 it is difficult to determine the reasons why nuclear power costs less in Asia.

 nuclear power is cheaper in Asia just because of better project management.

 neither project management nor labor costs explain the low cost of nuclear energy in Asia.

 lower labor costs are just part of the reason why nuclear power is less expensive in Asia.

As palavras one, but e another são essenciais para entender o trecho destacado nesta questão. Inicialmente, o fragmento aponta que a mão de obra barata é "one reason" - uma razão ou causa do baixo custo da potência nuclear na Ásia. Contudo, o uso de but (mas) introduz um novo pensamento: o de que o gerenciamento de projeto também é outra (another) causa. Desse modo, a alternativa (E) está correta, pois indica que a mão de obra barata é apenas uma das causas do baixo custo da potência nuclear asiática.

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