Editorial: The government claims that the country’s nuclear power plants are entirely safe and hence that the public’s fear of nuclear accidents at these plants is groundless. The government also contends that its recent action to limit the nuclear industry’s financial liability in the case of nuclear accidents at power plants is justified by the need to protect the nuclear industry from the threat of bankruptcy. But even the government says that unlimited liability poses such a threat only if injury claims can be sustained against the industry; and the government admits that for such claims to be sustained, injury must result from a nuclear accident. The public’s fear, therefore, is well founded.
Summary
The government claims that there will be no nuclear accidents. It also claims that it must protect the nuclear industry from the threat of bankruptcy posed by unlimited liability—the claims that follow are shown in the diagram below.
Notable Valid Inferences
The government’s position is inconsistent. We can see this by taking the contrapositive of the conditional relationship in the stimulus. The contrapositive shows that if there is no potential for injuries from a nuclear accident (which is what the government claims), unlimited liability does not pose a threat. However, the government also claims that unlimited liability does pose a threat. These two claims are incompatible.
A
The government’s claim about the safety of the country’s nuclear power plants is false.
This could be false. We know the government’s position is contradictory, but we don’t know which of its claims are true. It could be that the plants are safe and the government is incorrect to claim that unlimited liability poses a threat to the nuclear industry.
B
The government’s position on nuclear power plants is inconsistent.
This must be true. It cannot both be true that there is no potential for nuclear accidents and unlimited liability poses a threat to the nuclear industry.
C
The government misrepresented its reasons for acting to limit the nuclear industry’s liability.
This could be false. We know the government’s position is contradictory, but we don’t know which of its claims are true. It could be that the government wants to protect the industry from bankruptcy and it instead misrepresented how safe the nuclear power plants actually are.
D
Unlimited financial liability in the case of nuclear accidents poses no threat to the financial security of the country’s nuclear industry.
This could be false. The government claims that unlimited financial liability is a threat to the financial security of the nuclear industry. We don’t know for sure whether this claim is correct or not, only that the government made this claim.
E
The only serious threat posed by a nuclear accident would be to the financial security of the nuclear industry.
This could be false. The stimulus does not suggest that nuclear accidents do not threaten physical health or safety—it says that the government claims nuclear accidents won’t happen in the first place.