Four experienced hands assess the new media
There was a peak experience at the annual conference of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) this week (June 14-18, 2009). In a first-of-a-kind meeting Rod Adams from Atomic Insights, John Wheeler from This Week in Nuclear, Kirk Sorensen from Energy from Thorium, and Dan Yurman from Idaho Samizdat met in person and conducted a free-wheeling three-hour long panel titled “Communications in the New Media.” This is an exclusive report to the Energy Collective with highlights from the panel discussion.
It was organized by Dave Pointer, a nuclear scientist from Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) with help from Candace Davison, Penn State, Laura Scheele, ANS, and Laura Hermann, Potomac Communications Group. Ms. Davison moderated the session.
There are not many serious bloggers in the U.S. who cover the nuclear industry on a full time basis. There are perhaps fewer than a dozen who do blog frequently about the topic. The difference for this group is a commitment to consistent high quality content and in-depth analysis despite not being part of the nuclear trade press. That doesn't mean we're not capable of heavy lifting when it comes to explaining the key issues of the nuclear industry.
You can see who else blogs about nuclear energy, and matches our standards for high quality, by checking our respective blog rolls. For the most part news about the nuclear industry is available only behind pay-per-view firewalls with very substantial subscription rates.
For instance, Platts, which publishes Nucleonics Week, is one of the more widely read newsletters, and it gets a subscription fee that is more than anyone in the general public would likely ever pay. As a result until the rise in recent years of the new "social media," e.g., blogs and podcasts, as well as video, the only people who read more than wire service coverage of the nuclear industry were the top executives of the major utilities and EPC firms that service them.
What has happened with nuclear energy and the new media is that substantive news and analysis, often with industry thought and opinion leaders, is now available online without having to come up with the equivalent of several months of car payments. This means that some of the news and the “so what” analysis is now reaching an audience composed of mostly of the general public. What’s interesting is that according to Google Analytics, most of the same utilities and EPC firms are also reading the blogs.
Although all four of us fit within the broad definition of bloggers, there are significant differences among us in the way we approach the role, how we select stories to tell, the media we use, and the way we answer the “so what” question of convincing the reader to spend time with our online content.
How we view the role
Rod Adams, who in his day job deals with U.S. defense matters in the Washington, DC, area, has been blogging about nuclear energy longer than the rest of us. Some of his online content, like his coverage of the nuclear-powered merchant ship USS Savannah, goes back to the mid-1990s.
Rod also has experience with reactors on navy, but his blog posts are always communicated in plain English. His blog “Atomic Insights” is a combination of news, information, and sometimes strong opinion. For instance, he recently pointed out that the pace of nuclear energy R&D in the current decade would make the early pioneers of the industry weep because of the amount of time it takes to accomplish anything.
He wrote that the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear powered submarine, transmitted its now famous message about being underway with atomic energy less than three years from the time the first sheet of steel was cut by a welding torch in the shipyard.
By comparison, he says the “Next Generation Nuclear Plant,” or NGNP, an R&D prototype high-temperature gas-colled reactor, won’t be operational on the Arco desert of Idaho until possibly as late as 2021. Adams noted the Department of Energy first published the objectives for the project in 2004. He goes further questioning the extent to which the reactor design issues are being modeled in software rather than by hands-on engineering bench scale work.
This is the kind of combination of news, analysis, and historical perspective that has made Adams widely read and results in his blog being occasionally cited in the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times of London. No other nuclear blogger in the U.S. has such a profile.
Adams also publishes podcasts by interviewing industry leaders. Earlier this year he interviewed Lady Barbara Judge, the head of the U.K. nuclear decommissioning authority. He mentioned at the ANS conference this week he’s heard that since stepping down from that post she is will provide business advise to Hyperion, a privately held, venture capital funded start-up firm working on a design for a small 25 MW nuclear reactor. A spokesperson for Hyperion confirmed on June 18 that Judge is in discussions with the firm about an advisory or consultant role with the company.
John Wheeler, who in his day job works for a major nuclear energy utility, is a licensed senior reactor operator who has moved up to a management position dealing with workforce planning issues. John focuses on podcasts and is interested in how to get at the issue of public understanding of the nuclear industry.
One of his issues is how to convey in words the meaning of very large and very small numbers. For instance, in comparing coal as an energy source to nuclear he starts with the concept of energy density. He tells listeners to his podcast that by holding two uranium nuclear fuel pellets in his hands (yes, you can do that safely), you have a grasp on an energy source that is equal to a freight train of coal. On the other hand, he also points out the waste of ash from a coal fired power plant is equal to 20% of the original volume whereas the “waste” in a spent nuclear fuel assembly would be less than 5% of the volume.
He says when you compare energy in kilowatts produced per pound of material, nuclear wins hands down. Similarly, when you compare 20% of the original volume of a train load of coal to 5% of the volume in waste of a couple of fuel pellets the size of large marbles, the numbers still favor nuclear by a huge margin.
These kinds of word images are a signature of Wheeler’s relaxed style which may be ascribed to the fact that while being in his late 40s he still competes in iron man run, bike, swim competitions.
Wheeler noted that Areva’s recent forays into outreach to bloggers may cause other large nuclear firms to take a look at their efforts toward public transparency. According to Wheeler, these firms may decide they don’t need to talk to bloggers and are perfectly satisfied with how they are interacting with the public.
On the other hand, as these large firms make new acquisitions or spin-off elements of their business, Wheeler feels that branding, and especially methods for reaching new nuclear engineers coming out of college, will require the use of new media including blogs, Facebook, and other nontraditional distribution channels.
This week Wheeler has added video to his media lineup with taped reports from the ANS conference. His first report is with ANS student members. Note to nuclear recruiters, if you want to know what the next generation of nuclear engineers is thinking about the industry, watch the show.
Kirk Sorensen operates the blog Energy from Thorium. Although he wasn’t formally a part of the ANS panel, his welcome participation from the audience added a lot to the dialog. Sorensen said that one of the questions he gets as a blogger is “how do you tell people nuclear energy is safe?”
While he shares the general concerns of his blogging colleagues, Sorensen’s focus is on the use of thorium as a source of nuclear fuel. In addition to a blog, he also supports a series of discussion forums which has over 300 registered users talking about reactor designs.
Laura Scheele, the public outreach manager for ANS, was also a member of the panel. She said a key focus of her work is to establish a connection in the public’s mind between nuclear energy and improvements in quality of life. She said most of the public is not aware that 20% of the nation’s electricity comes from nuclear energy or that there are 104 nuclear plants in the U.S.
There is a danger in having an uninformed public she said and there is a significant continuing need for public education about radiation and public health issues. For example, without this kind of information, people might balk at having smoke detectors in their homes even though the alpha emitter in the sensor is shielded by ordinary materials of the unit. She mentioned that the web site of the Health Physics Society ‘Radiation Answers’ has excellent material aimed at this kind of issue.
As the last speaker on the panel, Dan Yurman, Idaho Samizdat, (that’s me) told the forum I agreed with John Wheeler that “journalistic shoe leather doesn’t go away in the electronic age” despite the fact that none of us are reporters in the mainstream definition of the word.
I was asked a question about how I handle advocacy for nuclear energy without being a “shill” for the industry. My answer is that it is up to the nuclear energy firms and their global supply chain to set the course for their destiny.
Nothing I say pro-or-con is going to make a lot of difference in how that plays out. However, the value I offer as a nuclear blogger in terms of informing the public is being a credible source of information relative to the anti-nuclear groups. I see my blog as a source of valid and verifiable information and analysis about the industry. That includes covering the places where events run smoothly and the potholes.
In closing the group agreed that bloggers are bringing new information to the public that was previously locked up in specialized newsletters. We’re not a substitute or replacement for those products and services, but still what we provide is better than the situation as it stood three or four years ago.
There are other new media services such as blog aggregation services like Nuclear Street and the Energy Collective. As the new media evolve, we will likely see more instances of bloggers “going pro” as the demand for content catches up with us. However, the revenue models will be different and that should include continued access to the content.
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