Iran rejects scientists’ warnings against building nuclear reactors

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2011/05/18/iran_rejects_scientists_warnings_against_building_nuclear_reactors/

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.

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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.

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Despite the scientists’ warnings, the talk ended with instructions approved by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to continue work on nuclear reactor designs. It was also decided to restrict access to the report, entitled “Geological Analysis and Seismic Activity in Khuzestan: Safety and Environment’’ by deleting it from computers at Tehran University’s Geographic Institute, the official said.

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