Iran rejects scientists’ warnings against building nuclear reactors
Planning is said to advance despite earthquake risks By George Jahn
Associated Press / May 18, 2011
VIENNA — The leaders of earthquake-prone Iran have rejected concerns by the country’s top scientists about a plan to build a national nuclear reactor network, according to intelligence shared with The Associated Press.
An official from a member nation of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna says the Iranian decision was reached shortly after Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, spewed radiation into the atmosphere, and evolved into the worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
According to the official, key Iranian leaders reviewed a 2005 report on Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan Province — site of a planned nuclear plant near the town of Darkhovin on the northern tip of the Persian Gulf — that was updated in 2010 and early this year with a study of earthquakes that have hit other Iranian provinces in the last decade.
The official said yesterday that the report by Iranian scientists warns that “data collected since the year 2000 shows the incontrovertible risks of establishing nuclear sites in the proximity of fault lines’’ in Khuzestan and 19 other Iranian provinces.
The official, who asked for anonymity in exchange for divulging intelligence information...
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2011/05/18/iran_rejects_scientists_warnings_against_building_nuclear_reactors/But don't worry, the country's top religious leader has made the decision...