There's a moment in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles when Tess wonders which of the dates in her calendar will be the one on which she dies. There are tragedies that get added to all our personal calendars as we grow older, turning innocuous dates into painful memories. The latest is March 11th, when the magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit Japan. The death toll, a year later, stands at 15,800, with thousands more still missing.Now, one of the things that we members of the press are wont to do when anniversaries like this roll around is ask ourselves what we could have done better. And unsurprisingly, the coverage of the Fukushima nuclear accident following the earthquake is prompting a lot of soul searching. At the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting last week, it was one of the big topics of discussion, and there's an excellent outline of the main points of concern on the Sense about Science website now.
One of their recommendations is "that governments and the nuclear industry relate their communications to the scientific evidence and are clear and open about the risks from nuclear energy." One of the major mistakes that some politicians have made in the past is to claim that nuclear power perfectly safe. When accidents happen, and they're proved wrong, the public instantly lose all faith in the technology. The truth is, no technology is foolproof, but even with the risk, nuclear power happens to have caused far fewer deaths than other means of energy production. The question is, is it a risk we're still willing to take?
The subject of nuclear risk is something I've explored for my latest feature in New Humanist magazine, now online. There also happen to be lots of brilliant pieces in this issue about freedom of speech. Check it out and also let me know your thoughts on nuclear safety.
2 responses:
I think politicians say nuclear is "perfectly safe' in the same manner they say they will balance the budget in 2 years.
I've worked in the US nuclear industry well over twenty years but am not a "true believer". Awhile back I wrote a novel providing an inside look at how a nuclear plant works in good and bad items. (It turns out the plant profiled and the bad times bear a strong resemblance to Fukushima.) One of the things I found most surprising was that there was little interest among journalists covering energy issues in this work, even though it offered a lot of first-hand perspective they weren't going to get via plant tours, reading reports, and listening to spokesman. I contacted many of them. So as I watched the coverage of the Fukushima disaster, I really wasn't that suprised with how bad the media handled it. (Not that the authorities were that much better.)
My book "Rad Decision" is available free online (just google the title or go to my website) as well as via Amazon. There are no advertisements and no sponsors. Rad Decision has garnered a lot of positive reviews from readers (so it can't be that bad), but no attention from the media.
Angela:
I've read a number of blogs on Fukushima and the anniversary of this disaster. For some reason, the whole subject really piques my interest. One thing I noticed was how amazingly fast in our new information age decisions are made.
Almost without any real analysis, Angela Merkel and the German government announced that they were shutting down all nuclear plants. Essentially, a major national decision on energy taken in the heat and emotions of the moment. What struck me was that there seemed to be little attempt to analyze the difference between the Fukushima reactor, and more modern reactors; rather, it was just shut the whole lot down. I am not a nuclear expert or in the industry, but it just seemed stunning that a major economic power like Germany would take such a decision with such little analysis. And you know who benefits from the Germans' decision? EDF, who will now have the opportunity sell power cross border from....wait for it...their own nuclear power plants!
Post a Comment