Did anyone else think that this was an incredibly weird question? First of all, I have never seen a stem that looks like this. Second, I thought that the answer choices were very weirdly out of scope. I haven't done too much work with early PTs - my drilling of 1-38 is just beginning - but even so I hope this question is an exception not a rule.
Anyway....I'll give this one my best shot.
No plan for safely storing this radioactive waste exists or has been devised
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We should shut down all the present nuclear plants and build no more of them
Wow, that escalated quickly. The argument is basically that, since nothing is really happening we just need to scrap the whole plan and start shutting everything down! Um.....what? There is almost too much weirdly wrong with this to pre-phrase anything.
(A) Do nuclear power plants develop said safe technologies? Do nuclear power plants produce electric power? We don't know therefore this cannot be correct.
(B) A reputation for operating safely? Where does this come into play? Scope issue?
(D) Do these nuclear power plants use fossil fuels? Where is the radioactive waste? What?
(E) Again...what? This is probably the most tempting but shouldn't we still consider to shut down plants if there is a lot of risk in the future?
(C) This seems to be, and I suppose is, the best answer. Where do we put all that radioactive waste if we shut everything down?! The author tries to solve the problem by essentially leaving the problem unsolved.
If anyone can help me make sense of these answer choices, or this question stem, or at least tell me that this question is indeed odd I would greatly appreciate it.
By the way, can someone edit this to be the correct title?
LSAT Forum
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Atticus Finch
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Re: Q1 - A Major art theft from a museum
WaltGrace, I think you're on the right track, and I've seen other posts of yours that have been helpful so you may have improved from the time you posted this!
There is indeed a huge jump from what to do with the radioactive waste, then concluding that everything should just be shut down. The flaw in the stimulus is that it doesn't even address the answer to the problem, and assumes that shutting down is the only way. And you're right, there would be nowhere to put the waste for permanent storage, which is exactly what (C) says.
In this particular question, it's somewhat easy to spot out the wrong answer choices simply because they're irrelevant and at least one of them tries to play on our previous knowledge. So we can eliminate those first.
(A) is an answer choice that the LSAT put there to lure us in if we relied on our previous knowledge, but it is not a flaw in the stimulus. This is actually irrelevant to the subject of where the radioactive waste should go.
(B) is also irrelevant because there was no talk about the plants' safety, although safety is implied in this stimulus.
(D) is out of scope. We don't know this to be true, and it does not detect the flaw in the stimulus about the radioactive waste.
(E) this tries to assume that there is some sort of temporal fallacy going on. This is not necessarily true and is not the flaw detected in the stimulus.
There is indeed a huge jump from what to do with the radioactive waste, then concluding that everything should just be shut down. The flaw in the stimulus is that it doesn't even address the answer to the problem, and assumes that shutting down is the only way. And you're right, there would be nowhere to put the waste for permanent storage, which is exactly what (C) says.
In this particular question, it's somewhat easy to spot out the wrong answer choices simply because they're irrelevant and at least one of them tries to play on our previous knowledge. So we can eliminate those first.
(A) is an answer choice that the LSAT put there to lure us in if we relied on our previous knowledge, but it is not a flaw in the stimulus. This is actually irrelevant to the subject of where the radioactive waste should go.
(B) is also irrelevant because there was no talk about the plants' safety, although safety is implied in this stimulus.
(D) is out of scope. We don't know this to be true, and it does not detect the flaw in the stimulus about the radioactive waste.
(E) this tries to assume that there is some sort of temporal fallacy going on. This is not necessarily true and is not the flaw detected in the stimulus.
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