yrresnik wrote: ↑Tue Dec 31, 2019 11:20 am
Administrator wrote:Complete Question Explanation
Must Be True. The correct answer choice is (B).
According to this stimulus, the researchers found iodine, tellurium, and cesium in the downwind atmosphere. Within that same sentence, the speaker specifies that the researchers found no heavy isotopes in the downwind atmosphere.
Later, the speaker introduces the fact that if radioactive material entered the atmosphere directly from the core, that material would contain heavy isotopes. We can thus infer that there are heavy isotopes in the nuclear core, and that a core ejection would not explain the researchers' findings.
We are also told that fuel rods never contain significant quantities of tellurium isotopes, which forces us to look for another origin for the downwind isotope discovery.
The final two sentence tell us that steam may have been in contact with the core, and that if it had been, it could have easily dissolved - and plausibly carried - the three isotopes that the researchers found downwind. This ultimately leads us to the correct inference. Answer choice (B) states the material that the researchers found was carried by steam released from the plant.
Answer choice (A): This is basically an Opposite Answer, so we can quickly eliminate it, as it's likely that the radioactive material came from the core, rather than the fuel rods.
Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer. The stimulus tells us that there are heavy isotopes in the core, and that "radioactive material ejected into the atmosphere directly from the core would include heavy isotopes." Since we didn't find heavy isotopes, it seems unlikely that the stuff we found was ejected directly from the core. But the steam is an alternative to that scenario! What if, instead of being ejected directly from the core, those isotopes were carried by steam that came into contact with the core? Not a direct ejection, but an indirect cause - the steam comes into contact with the core, dissolves the isotopes of iodine, tellurium, and cesium, and carries them along as vapor/gas, and that's what we found downwind? Nothing was ejected from the core at all, just some things were picked up and carried by the steam? That's the inference we should be making here! It's not likely to be the fuel rods, and it's not likely to be a direct ejection of material from the core, but it could be the result of steam being released that was in contact with the core.
Answer choice (C): This is a bait-and-switch, trying to swap "not the source of the radioactive materials" for "not damaged," which are two very different things.
Answer choice (D): This is the other attractive answer choice, but fails when we consider that we don't know anything about what the fuel rods contain, so we don't have any basis to support an inference that the material came from them.
Answer choice (E): is unsupported by the stimulus, so immediately wrong.
Why would it not be strongly supported to assume from the stimulus that rods contain tellurium? Is says doesn’t contain significant which strongly implies contains less than significant no? Which would make answer choice d pretty even with b.
I second the reasoning that it is possible that the rods contain tellurium. Even if the stimulus states that rods do not contain SIGNIFICANT tellurium, it is still very possible that the rods contain some tellurium, even if it is a small amount. I do, however, see why answer choices D, A, C, and E are incorrect. My question is, is it possible for the LSAT to create a question like this, where there is more than one possibility, and only one possibility is given as a correct answer?
