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  • Leaking Esfahan Reactor

    Isfahan residents evacuation order | Washington Free Beacon

    Not good for locals...
    "Bother", said Poo, chambering another round.

  • #2
    Originally posted by tuna View Post
    No, but neither does it appear to be the story the 'Washington Free Beacon' thinks it is. This is what the BBC says:

    Iranian authorities have advised the one and a half million people who live in Isfahan to leave the city if they can because pollution has now reached emergency levels. The same thing happened in the capital Tehran earlier this week. Kasra Naji works for the BBC's Persian TV service in London.
    BBC News - Today - Today: Wednesday 2nd January

    The implication is clear - this is about air pollution. I went to the BBC website & there isn't a story on this - it only appeared as a news brief. I'm pretty sure that if there were any suspicions of a leak it would be getting more coverage.

    On the other hand, the 'Washington Free Beacon' leads with this:

    Iranian officials have instructed residents of Isfahan to leave the city, renewing concerns that a nearby nuclear site could be leaking radioactive material
    It quotes the BBC story very selectively, leaving out the important contextual information. Later it quotes an expert:

    “Pollution in Isfahan is a problem but in the past, Iranian authorities respond by closing schools and the government to keep people at home and let the pollution dissipate, not by evacuating people,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq who has written about Isfahan’s battle against pollution.

    “Mass evacuations suggest a far more serious problem,” Rubin explained. “There are two possibilities here: There is a radiation leak and the regime is lying or there is really bad pollution and no one believes the regime’s explanations.”
    So, air pollution is a recurrent problem in Isfahan, yet the 'Washington Free Beacon' is focussed on other things. The article goes to great lengths to suggest that this is a nuclear leak, spending most of its time focussing on real, imagined or potential problems wiht the reactor & very little time on the issue of air pollution which, given events in Tehran, seems the more likely explanation at this point.

    You might want to improve the quality of your sources & read them more carefully. I only had to read the name of the website to become suspicious. The article itself raised further suspicions. A google search in which it was the only outlet running the story made me yet more suspicious. Until we have further evidence this is jumping the gun by a long ways.
    Last edited by Bigfella; 04 Jan 13,, 05:38.
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    • #3
      Yikes - Iran on the fast track to nuclear weapons - stuff like this happened in the Soviet Union during their race to build the bomb - in the US too.
      This is potentially much worse than a power reactor accident - a fuel procesing center could easily have a much larger inventory than a powerplant - and more radioactivity to disperse.
      With the processing schedules I've heard about in recent years - there could be massive amounts of dangerous material there.

      here are some more articles about an explosion there a year ago- but nothing else about this on the search I just did

      Report: Explosion rocks Iran city of Isfahan, home to key nuclear facility - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper

      Loud Blast Reportedly Rocks Iranian City of Isfahan | Fox News
      Last edited by USSWisconsin; 04 Jan 13,, 07:30.
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      • #4
        You don't evacuate a city for air pollution.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by snapper View Post
          You don't evacuate a city for air pollution.
          As far as we know they haven't. We just have a BBC report that runs to a few lines saying that officials have 'advised' people to leave & a tweet that says even less. Everything else seems to be based on not much more than that. It might be wise to wait a while to actually find out what is happening before rushing to all manner of conclusions.

          Oh, and telling people to leave or planning to evacuate them because of pollution isn't exactly unprecedented

          ....this past year alone.

          Air pollution in the Northern province of Chiang Rai has worsened to a dangerous level, prompting authorities to consider evacuating children and elderly people over the next few days.
          Authorities consider evacuating children and the aged as air pollution in North worsens - The Nation

          ....or in the past month....in Iran.

          Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi – the only female minister in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government – issued the drastic advice as soaring pollution levels prompted a rise in hospital admissions and the emergency closure of schools, universities and government agencies.

          "If Tehran's inhabitants are able to leave the city, it would be good for them to do so," she said, according to the Arman newspaper.

          Her comments came after Tehran, one of the world's most polluted and traffic-clogged cities, was enveloped by a choking poisonous haze which experts say was severe even by its standards.

          Iranians told to flee Tehran - Telegraph

          Fair to say the title of this thread is a LONG way from proven.

          Now, can we hold our horses & do some research before jumping to any more conclusions please?
          Last edited by Bigfella; 04 Jan 13,, 09:05.
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          • #6
            Originally posted by snapper View Post
            You don't evacuate a city for air pollution.
            Actually they do, at least in Iran. There are mass migrations from Tehran when the pollution levels there get too high. Many Iranian cities are trapped in bowls and rival or surpass Beijing for grey air. A quick Google Image search of Tehran and pollution will show just how bad it is. In fact Tehran has declared an air emergency for tomorrow.

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            • #7
              Well, its 3 days since the 'Washington Free Beacon' started the internet buzzing with its news of impending nuclear disaster in Iran and 'evacuation' of Isfahan. No further news on either nuclear disaster or 'evacuation of the city'. I'm going to go out onto a very large, very sturdy limb here & call this 'busted'. It looks now as it looked in the initial BBC report - officials encouraging people to leave a city where pollution had reached dangerous levels. Overwhelmingly those who have speculated at length about a nuclear link sppear to be people who want to believe it, not people who have a shred of evidence for it.

              Beware the 'internet headline' (and low quality heavily biased interenet news magazines).
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