PrepTest 107, Section 1, Question 22
Editorial: The government claims that the country's nuclear(105 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(10 more words not shown)
- AIf the government(23 more words not shown)
- BFear that a(30 more words not shown)
- CIf a potentially(33 more words not shown)
- DThe government sometimes(34 more words not shown)
- EIf a real(16 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
You say the plants are safe, but you're protecting their operators from the financial consequences of an accident. Why would that protection be needed if no accident could happen?
Let's untangle the government's explanation. It wants to protect the industry against bankruptcy. Unlimited liability could cause that problem only if injured people could successfully bring claims, and those claims require injuries from a nuclear accident. So the government's action seems to acknowledge a danger that its safety claim denies.
The editorial takes that tension one step further: therefore, the public is right to be afraid. I'm not ready to go that far. The government could have misjudged the need for protection. Confused or unnecessary government action would not tell us that the plants themselves are dangerous. We've learned about a government decision, not established how safely the plants operate.
What we’re looking for
We're looking for a principle that helps justify the editorial. Then connect those two things. Give us a reason to treat the government's protective action as evidence of a real danger, so that our objection about unnecessary action no longer gets in the way.
Working the answers
- A
The government says the plants are safe. A tells us what to do when the government says something is unsafe. That difference matters: the situation that would activate this rule never occurs in the passage. We cannot use it to turn a safety assurance into evidence of danger.
- B
Limiting a possible financial loss isn't the same as profiting from an accident. The industry could lose less money than it otherwise would and still be far worse off than if no accident happened. We also aren't given the claim that someone who controls whether accidents occur would benefit from them. B's condition hasn't been established.
- C
This describes safety that depends entirely on a financial incentive: the operators keep something safe only because an accident would threaten their finances. That might be an interesting concern about limiting liability, but the passage never establishes that this is the only thing keeping the plants safe. We would have to add that premise before the rule applied. Also, the editorial concludes that fear is justified, rather than simply judging a policy against the public interest.
- DCorrect
Now government action tells us something that government assurances might not. If the government acts to prevent a situation, there must be a real danger of that situation arising.
Here the government acts to prevent industry bankruptcy from accident claims. Its own account says that threat requires successful injury claims, which require injuries from an accident. D gives us a reason to treat this action as evidence of a real accident risk. That supports the public's fear despite the government's possibly unsupported assurance that the plants are safe.
- E
This would justify protecting an industry if it faced a real financial threat. But the editorial's conclusion concerns whether the public's fear is well founded. E doesn't establish that a real threat exists merely because the government has taken action. It tells us what to do once a threat is established, leaving our missing connection unresolved.
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