The Media and Nuclear Power

[RDTroja]

I think this is the problem the plagues the nuclear industry as a whole.  The general public is ignorant of all things nuclear.  The nuclear power conglomerates should educate the public with TV commercials, etc. to help overcome the public misperceptions.  Until they do this, the "Nuclear Renaissance" will never become a reality.

Just my .02

I have said this before, but I think it occasionally needs repeating...

The same people that make electricity from nuclear power also make it from coal, oil and gas. This has changed a little bit over the past years, but it still generally holds true. The best way to make nuclear power look good is to show how much better it is than fossil fuels, in the process showing how bad an idea it is to burn those fuels. Nuclear makes up 20% of electricity in the US. So to promote nuclear power the way it should be promoted requires damaging the reputation of 80% of the product the industry produces. Bad advertising there.

Yes, the people at TMI should say in very clear terms exactly what did happen and that there was no danger to workers or the public. Unfortunately the press always gets there first and they get to write the story the way they want. They also get to determine how much coverage and importance to give the company's rebuttal to the original story. In other words, they have already rigged the game.

There were more newspapers sold during the Three Mile Island Accident (as opposed to incident) than in any other time in history. Think about that for a second. More than when Kennedy was shot. Or Martin Luther King and the ensuing riots. Or when Armstrong walked on the moon. That is amazing. The press learned that scared people bought newspapers. The venue has changed a bit from paper to web sites, but the results are the same. They have every reason to want to make nuclear power scary... they make lots of money from it, and they really need money right now.

Nobody is going to spread the word except us. Tell everyone you meet that nuclear power is not the demon the press makes it out to be. That was a really hard sell when I was trying to make it in the 70s and 80s, but I still did it whenever I could. As a board member of the Michigan Chapter of the American Nuclear Society in the mid 80s I talked to reporters that were amazed that we considered them the enemy and had no idea that they were being sensationalistic when they reported, because they didn't even know the truth. Proselytize about it. Tell people at every opportunity. Because no one else will. It is easier today than 30 years ago. But it still needs to be done.

[/soapbox]

[Gamecock]

Nobody is going to spread the word except us. Tell everyone you meet that nuclear power is not the demon the press makes it out to be. That was a really hard sell when I was trying to make it in the 70s and 80s, but I still did it whenever I could. As a board member of the Michigan Chapter of the American Nuclear Society in the mid 80s I talked to reporters that were amazed that we considered them the enemy and had no idea that they were being sensationalistic when they reported, because they didn't even know the truth. Proselytize about it. Tell people at every opportunity. Because no one else will. It is easier today than 30 years ago. But it still needs to be done.

[/soapbox]

I agree that we, the people that work in and around the industry, have a responsibility to educate those around us on nuclear power.

However, we can only do so much.  My sphere of influence can only reach so far.  Even still, I've still got relatives that think what we do is some kind of black magic.  Ignorance is bliss, I guess. 

There is a good letter to the editor in this months "Nuclear NEWS" magazine put out by ANS.  It talks about the ignorance of a highly educated man in regards to nuclear power. 

I really believe the key to the future is to educate the youth of today.  Teach them in the public schools about the benefits of nuclear power, and when they are older, they won't be scared of nuclear power like the folks of today.  Where should the money for such a scientific education come from?  How about from the nuclear conglomerate that will reap the benefits in the future.

[MeterSwangin]

What actually happened at the TMI SGR?  Somebody grind on mrad pipe-end or what?

[RDTroja]

Life experience;

This topic comes up in a casual discussion with some project folks out in Jersey once upon a time. These are "smart people", "degreed" in the modern schools of higher learning, with that well rounded education that only a four year or greater stint at academia can instill in the future leaders and movers of our society. My position was simple; students in the secondary schools need exposure to the concepts and implementation of risk management to prepare them for making measured and rational decisions as citizens and voters.

To a (wo)man, all seven said that my position was one of the silliest notions they ever heard. People do not have to be rational or semiskilled in deductive thought to make good decisions about such things as nuclear power, national debt, etc.


We (as a nation and a society) are not only neglecting to encourage the horses to drink, we are not even bothering to lead them to the water,...


(sic)

I have been advocating that position for a long time. And I have gotten the same responses. High schools need to teach logic and risk management techniques and they really don't do either. Very sad. Scary, too. If we are not careful, we may end up with a leader who is charismatic but has no leadership experience or skills, just because the people were unable to... nevermind.

[Preciousblue1965]

The problem with stories like this is that this kind of story is what makes it to the front pages, whereas stories about how well a plant operates or its lack of incidents is never even put out to the public.  It is like that old adage "One oops wipes out a hundred 'atta boys"

A lot of the older population still remembers the first TMI and Chernobyl.  That is all they know about nuclear power.  Unless you worked in the industry or the Navy, lived near a plant, or had family in either of the first two groups, you knew nothing about nuclear power except for the disaster stories.  The only exception is when people hear about the need to build new reactors, and then people STILL think of those two blemishes.  They don't understand how nuclear power works, and they don't want to take the time to learn.  Now if someone was to make a video game about it that somehow involved space aliens, we might get through to the next generation.  It is an our unfunded job to educate people about nuclear power and to dispell several of the myths about it.  However, as Marssism has pointed out, "Don't argue with idiots", so there will always be those who think that the "China Syndrome" is the gospel and that we are just out to cover it up with our propaganda and to make money. 

Until we start seeing people actually take the time to research how nuclear power really works(even if it is wikipedia), we will always be dealing with the negative perception of the public based on those two incidents.  Most people if they have a bad day at work, they end up burning someone's hamburger, losing a major contract, or crashing the company car.  There is a little pain, but in the end it is pretty easy to get over.  If nuclear power has a Really bad day, that part of the Earth is unihabitable for many decades. IT is hard for people to get past that, unless we explain to them how much we learned from those two incidents and why this is a very small chance of it happening again. 

[RDTroja]

...  Most people if they have a bad day at work, they end up burning someone's hamburger, losing a major contract, or crashing the company car.  There is a little pain, but in the end it is pretty easy to get over.  If nuclear power has a Really bad day, that part of the Earth is unihabitable for many decades. IT is hard for people to get past that, unless we explain to them how much we learned from those two incidents and why this is a very small chance of it happening again.  

This is actually part of the problem. TMI and Chernobyl can't be lumped into 'nuclear disasters that make part of the planet uninhabitable.' The education has to start with "TMI proved we can't screw up so bad that we scar the earth." Chernobyl was the result of a bad design that everyone KNEW was a bad design and the whole world had told the Soviets was a bad design. The arrogance of 'our people are so well trained that they will not make a mistake' was what did in Chernobyl in the end, but the design was doomed from the beginning. We need to make sure that people understand the difference between TMI and Chernobyl, not let them think they are similar in any respect.

At TMI the operators made virtually every wrong decision that they came across. I am not indicting them, they simply did not have the knowledge that we gained when the event happened. They were faced with indications that their training had told them could not co-exist and they took steps that they believed would fix the problem. They guessed wrong. Even with all of that, the amount of radioactive material that got away was not enough to cause anything more than a PR problem. The most disastrous part of TMI was the way that the press and the government officials responded.

Chernobyl, on the other hand was a disaster that just hadn't happend yet, until it did. The design was faulty, the procedures were faulty, the management was faulty and the test they were carrying out when the accident occurred was faulty to begin with and executed poorly in the end. The steam explosion was bad, but the fire was the real killer as far as environmental damage was concerned. We simply can't make one of our reactors do that. Twenty years later, the public still does not know that.

TMI was not even a drop in the Chernobyl ocean. And it is quite likely the worst event we will have outside the RBMK world. Please don't let the public think they have anything in common. If we lump them together, they will, too.

[Neutron_Herder]

I've had several of my friends and family members email me the story about the stuff that happened this weekend and ask me if I really want to be in this business with things like this happening.  I've tried to take the time to respond to each one with two big points.

1)  No activity was released to the atmosphere.  Even the NRC agrees that there is no radiological impact, and even the people that did receive some exposure received less than any one person that lives in the Denver area, flies in an airplane or a living, or gets a chest xray.

2)  The fact that it's being treated like a big deal by the people involved is ultimately a good thing, IMO.  The fact that we dissect everything that happens, no matter how minor, is the reason that the program is as safe as it is.  If done correctly, critiques and root cause analysis give good information to all concerned and also help to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

People are scared of what they don't understand though, and that's a difficult thing to overcome.  Once sensationalized by the media it's almost insurmountable.

[Preciousblue1965]

Not true. Two places where the nuclear world had a VERY bad day, and are quite inhabited today, as the webcams testify and bear witness;

Nagasaki;

http://www.doboku.pref.nagasaki.jp/~rinkai/fuukei/tokiwa.htm

Hiroshima:

http://219.118.253.214/top/liveapplet.html

Chernobyl is not economically viable for remediation and restoration, Russia is a big place and has lots more ground still waiting for the shovels of new construction.

Ok fair enough.  I stand corrected. 

I also agree that TMI and Chernobyl are indeed two different birds and we have learned so much from both incidents, either in regards to operating or radiation effects.  Same thing with SL-1 with regards to rod criteria and other aspects.

But just remember that there are those that salivate at any and all negative stories associated with nuclear power and will do everything they can to demonize that industry, using misconstrued facts or just flat out lies.  Unfortunately it is easier to convince the public of the negatives of something they don't understand, than it is to educate the public about a science as intricate as nuclear power.