Nuclear News is Not Fair and Balanced

Sep 02 - Power Engineering

People involved in any organized human activity, from businesses to churches and civic organizations - including families - experience a distinctly different perspective of that activity than do people on the outside. Nuclear energy exists in these two distinct arenas, also, but the perspectives from inside and outside are more than just different: they are poles apart. Whether it is reactor safety, radiation, waste disposal or a host of other issues, nuclear insiders are much more confident in nuclear technology than the general public is. For years the industry has struggled with how to impart the professionals' understanding of the technology and, hence, their comfort level, to the public. Unfortunately, it seems that little progress has been made.

When the media use the word "nuclear" these days, it is most likely in the context of rogue nations like Iran and North Korea developing nuclear weapons. The public may come to think that enriching uranium necessarily implies clandestine efforts to create weapons of mass destruction that will destabilize the world order and, perhaps, even threaten the very existence of Western civilization.

In one case, a nation overflowing with cheap petroleum insists that it is enriching uranium because it needs additional energy sources. In the other, the government of a small, backward country is developing expensive and sophisticated enrichment technology, claiming a need for massive quantities of electric power while its people are starving and lack even basic necessities.

From what he hears on the news, the typical American reaches the obvious conclusion that uranium enrichment is something undertaken for sinister purposes. The news provides no way to put this into perspective with other everyday activities. Why can't the news media understand that enrichment is to nuclear fuel as refining is to gasoline? Gasoline doesn't have to be processed further into napalm, and uranium doesn't have to be made into atomic bombs. And even closer to home, the uranium enrichment situation is similar to that with ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It is a useful substance that can be made into a powerful explosive, but that isn't done commonly.

It seems the press can't speak of uranium or plutonium without calling it all "weapons grade," whether or not it really is. Thus, the public keeps in mind at all times that there is a connection between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. But why don't they call napalm "weapons-grade gasoline," or dynamite "weapons-grade fertilizer?"

The second-most newsworthy nuclear topic lately seems to be waste disposal, thanks to the "not in my back yard" cries of Nevada politicians regarding the Yucca Mountain waste repository project.

Any waste, by its nature, is unpleasant, so cities across America constantly struggle to find a disposal site for their solid waste. Nuclear waste is burdened with the added baggage of being radioactive. Thanks to the media's insistence that the term "radioactive waste" must always be prefaced by the word "deadly," the public has developed an irrational fear of nuclear waste and the associated radiation. In the public mind, this is a mysterious, lurking danger you can't see, feel, touch or taste - which makes it scary stuff. Politicians don't dare favor nuclear waste disposal among their constituents, because this would be political suicide. Thus, Nevada state officials of both parties are using every legal trick in the book to block the Yucca Mountain waste repository despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the project is sound and the public risks are miniscule.

Nuclear professionals understand that nuclear waste is unique in that it will eventually lose toxicity of its own accord, and that there are technologies that can hasten its demise. Furthermore, these technologies, while reducing the waste quantity, could provide additional nuclear energy for hundreds of years. As it is, nuclear waste is captured and securely disposed of rather than being distributed throughout the atmosphere in the form of air or water pollution. The waste is sequestered so public radiation exposure from it is so low as to be indistinguishable from the natural state of the earth, and there will be no ill health effects. But the public doesn't understand these things, because the testimony of the knowledgeable is always equally balanced in the media by the testimony of the ignorant.

Municipal landfills harbor harmful bacteria that would be fatal if ingested. But the public doesn't hear the word "deadly" used every time the media speak of garbage. And nobody expects the authorities to analyze in detail and publish the many ways in which garbage bacteria might reenter the biosphere, and what harm the bacteria could do if large numbers of people ate large quantities of them. Contrary to nuclear requirements, courts have not ruled that that landfills must be guaranteed safe for the life of the bacteria.

The nuclear industry must continue its struggle to eliminate the unfair asymmetry between how the media treat nuclear topics versus how they depict others. But it's an uphill battle.

BY: JOHN C. ZINK, PH.D., P.E., CONTRIBUTING EDITOR