34. Another Cause for Alarm in Iran's Nuclear Program: Earthquakes

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/another-cause-for-alarm-in-irans-nuclear-program-earthquakes/275098/

On April 18th, Jillian Keenan wrote an article about the attitude of Iranian leaders regarding the danger of earthquakes damaging nuclear power plants. Keenan begins with a short description of the recently occurred earthquake that struck in Iran and uses that to say how the country suffers a lot of seismic activity. She demonstrates how other countries are very worried about this by saying how international groups, like the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), do not believe that Iran’s reactors are safe from the possibility of being damaged, despite their leader’s assurance. Since Iran is not part of UN's Convention on Nuclear Safety and the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage, they do not meet all the safety standards and “could reject responsibility for any international damage caused by an incident at its nuclear facility.” Keenan says that their power plant does not produce a large percentage of Iran’s power and is very expensive, implying that it is not worth to keep it active in the risk of earthquake damage. Although she compares the possible consequences to the Fukushima event, Keenan quotes a professor who says that the chance of such a large earthquake of happening is slim and it needs to be a thousand times larger than the ones that have been happening.

The author’s purpose in writing this article is to inform her readers about the conflicting ideas regarding the safety of Iran’s nuclear power plants and to persuade them to believe that the power plant is in a precarious position. Jillian Keenan uses description to state the consequences of a possible nuclear reactor leakage and to account for the earthquake that hit the country recently to persuade her readers that Iran is too light in its attitude towards the issue. She gives many arguments why other countries are nervous about the power plant and she also gives reasons why the Iranian leader seems to be alright with the situation. She uses many quotes from respected individual’s like professors, presidents, and leaders of international agencies to support what she says. She also uses statistics to highlight the risks and the chances of occurrence of large magnitude earthquakes to show the U.S. is relatively safe from any dangerous event regarding nuclear disasters. Her language is objective and she seems to be biased against Iran’s relaxed attitude.