News media coverage and blog posts take different paths towards the same destination
At the American Nuclear Society winter meeting taking place in Washington, DC, this week, two sessions highlighted efforts to remove the veil of confusion on three critical issues affecting the public debate on nuclear energy. These are that development of civilian nuclear energy leads to proliferation of nuclear weapons, that management of spent nuclear fuel has no solution, and that the industry does not need loan guarantees for new reactors because they are subsidies in disguise.
The first session was a panel of top flight journalists who cover energy issues. Organized by Mimi Limbach of Potomac Communications, it included reporter George Lobsenz, Energy Daily, Matthew Wald, New York Times, Angie Pointer, Dow Jones News Wires, and Jim van Nostrand, McClatchy News. The audience had a typical ANS profile of nuclear engineers, utility executives, and industry consultants.
The second session was a meeting of 45 people involved or interested in new social media including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and similar types of online tools and services. In addition to your faithful reporter, the audience included Rod Adams from Atomic Insights, John Wheeler from ThisWeekinNuclear, Dave Bradish from NEI Nuclear blog, William Tucker, author of the new book Terrestrial Energy, Ed Kee, a consultant who moderates the leading nuclear energy group on Linkedin, Nancy Roth, managing editor of Fuel Cycle Week and many others.
Panel on news media and nuclear energy
The debate over energy policy is often categorized by preferences for fuel types or technologies, but Matt Wald of the NYT asked the audience this question; “How much is saving a ton of carbon emissions from going into the atmosphere worth to you?”
George Lobsenz jumped in to say that the focus on “energy policy” is really about gaining a preferred financial position,and returns, for specific fuels types. He added that for all the talk about renewable energy, our economy still runs on fossil fuels and will likely continue to depend on them for decades into the future.
The panelists agreed that the nuclear renaissance is not a sure thing with many potholes in the road to a renewal of the industry. Lobsenz said that “nuclear energy arouses religious zeal among its opponents.”
Matt Wald added that in his coverage, the issue of the cost of new reactors is emerging as a key issue. He asked, “can the industry deliver a plant for a fixed price,” and noted that in Texas CPS Energy was trying to discover the answer to that question with Toshiba and the expansion of the South Texas Project.
Is ‘geek talk’ helpful?
In response to a question from the audience about how engineers can be more effective in talking to the news media, the answer from the panelists is that reporters will not write about technical issues they do not understand. Even if they try, their editors, who are non-technical, will strip out geek talk.
Wald added that traditional methods of distributing public information via press releases are being overtaken by the real time web. If there is any kind of incident or emergency at a nuclear power plant, he said, “the public will go look at your web site and want the most current information you have from it.”
He added that a utility that relies on the model of communicating via phone and fax from an Emergency Operations Center is working from an “obsolete”model> It will see its credibility suffer if it does not use 21st century media tools to get the word out.
Use of up-to-date tools is not enough. The information about the complexities of an incident at a nuclear plant must be communicated in plain English. Wald said, “The web must be intelligible.”
Angie Porter added that one of the good things about electronic media, compared to dead trees media (newspapers that publish once a day), is that it can be updated 24 x 7. One of the bad things is that people come to expect instant updates. There also must be depth to the message.
Lobsenz said that “puffery is a recipe for disaster.”
On the other hand, he said, explaining things well adds to credibility.
“ Engineering speak is sometimes reassuring because it conveys the impression you know what you are talking about. However, don’t get too technical because if you are mind boggling, it will backfire.”
Build locally, Buy Globally
The nuclear renaissance in the U.S. is characterized by 18 license applications for new reactors with some sites having two units. Even if just a few of them are built in the next decade, most of the supply chain for long lead time components will be from Japan, France, Korea, and the U.K. Matt Wald noted that even the fuel cycle has overseas components as 50% of the commercial nuclear fuel used in the U.S. comes from Russia.
The panel talked about the necessity of the U.S. regaining its nuclear manufacturing capability to compete in the global market for exports. If we don’t, they said, we’ll be buyers of other people’s technologies and will never have a have a leadership role when it comes to nuclear energy.
How effective are nukes in telling their story?
In response to a question from the audience, the panel members were split on whether the new social media are having any impact on coverage of the nuclear industry. Wald and Lobsenz said that only in a few cases did they develop stories based on leads from bloggers. However, van Nostrand said that McClatchy actually developed blogs for its newspapers which were well received by readers.
Another questions from the audience was how to determine whether bloggers writing about nuclear energy topics are believable. Several engineers in the audience said they believe that some blogs are written by “cranks.” Lobsenz noted that corporate public information officers in the nuclear industry have told him they don’t want to talk to bloggers because they fear losing control of the message.
On the other hand, the panelist were unanimous that the nuclear energy industry has been timid and ineffective in telling its story. An additional barrier is that non-technical editors have an inherent bias against nuclear energy stories, and especially distrust stories about radiation issues. Editors also know that while there is rising public support for nuclear energy, one major nuclear energy accident will end it forever.
Many editors find good news stories about the nuclear energy industry to be boring. Wald noted that a story he did on fire dangers at a nuclear plant got page one position, but one on a record production run at another reactor was relegated to the back pages of the Science Section.
Nuclear bloggers unite at ANS winter meeting
While the mainstream news media panel was dissecting their coverage of the nuclear energy industry, a group of 45 people met Tuesday Nov 17 to discuss how social media is making an impact. One of the themes of the evening round table discussion is how nuclear bloggers are taking myths out of the debate. Several “war stories” were told about how pro-nuclear bloggers developed informed responses to mis-information from anti-nuclear groups.
William Tucker, the author of Terrestrial Energy, who is now a consultant and speech writer for Sen. Lamar Alexander, asked the group if there is a single message people would want give him. Naturally, he didn’t get one message. Concerns were expressed about loan guarantees, Yucca Mountain, and the perennial linking of civilian reactors by opponents of commercial nuclear power to nuclear weapons.
An article in the November issue of Scientific American was cited which said one of the environmental impacts of nuclear energy is the consequences of a nuclear war. Since the U.S. and Russia are down sizing their nuclear arsenals, its seems more and more unlikely a nuclear weapon will ever be used by either country. In any case, the article was roasted as a particularly bad piece of writing in a mainstream media magazine.
Laura Hermann of Potomac Communications told the group that responding to this type of “myth” is important. She said, “if one less person is against nuclear energy as a result of your efforts,it is a victory.”
Dave Bradish, who blogs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, talked about his four-part rebuttal to Amory Lovin’s essay on Stewart Brand’s new book that includes a chapter on nuclear energy. Bradish pointed out that Lovins “shovels data” at his opponents while at the same time he “cherry picks” the information he needs to support his position. The result is the reader doesn’t have a context to logically question what Lovins writes.
Rod Adams mentioned that he has been blogging about nuclear energy since 1995 when he first brought up a web site about it. He agreed that an essential outcome of his work has been to dispel the “myths” in the public debate about nuclear energy,
This blogger event was also an opportunity for Areva to talk about its now two years of experience reaching out to nuclear bloggers. Alan Hanson, a senior executive with Areva, talked about the firm’s efforts to understand not only what bloggers are writing about but also why.
He pointed out that Areva has had a blog of its own on nuclear energy since last May and that it will be re-launched later this year with an updated design and more interactive features. Areva is the only major nuclear energy firm in the U.S. that has paid any attention to social media in terms of people outside the firm who develop independent content.
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The blogger meeting was organized by Rod Adams, Atomic Insights; Dave Bradish, NEI; John Wheeler, ThisWeekInNuclear, and Dan Yurman, Idaho Samizdat. Corporate support for the conference room and refreshments was provided by Areva and CoolHandNuke.
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