NUKESPEAK

...ever, is not merely an exercise in linguistic subterfuge...

...In a 1989 Science article, Leonard Sagan argued that low-dose radiation stimulates the DNA-repair and immune systems, thereby increasing resistance to disease...

...Since the study did not measure any releases from the facilities, there's no way to know which areas of excess cancer were due to excess radiation...

...But findings from at least nine well-designed studies on human populations indicate a five- to-thirty-fold increase in the risk from low-level exposures, which take their toll in a cumulative fashion...

...Last September, for example, the National Cancer Institute released a major study of cancer deaths in 107 counties containing sixty-two nuclear facilities...

...Ray Lee, an environmental activist, has been involved in nuclear issues since 1977...

...Solar and wind power, nuclear's primary eco-competitors, are branded by nuclear supporters as pie-in-the-sky solutions...

...Fudging figures and reconstructing data are tantamount to criminal offenses among scientists...

...EPA officials have not only misrepresented the risks, claims Gould, but have frequently falsified radiation measurements taken around nuclear power plants...

...The report acknowledged high rates of cancer in some counties and low rates in others, and concluded that nuclear power plants posed no significant hazard overall...

...Accidental radioactive releases further undermine the industry's bold green message...

...He edits a weekly newspaper in Washington, North Carolina...

...When you buy efficiency, a dollar's worth saves a great deal of electricity and thus displaces a lot of coal-burning...

...Asked whether nuclear power would have any role in fueling automobiles, USCEA's Scott Peters says blithely, "I wouldn't rule it out...

...Many U.S...

...Not surprisingly, independent scientists whose positions oppose the industry's are either selectively quoted or never heard from...

...With the [Gulf] crisis and concerns over global warming, the public is waking up to the benefits of nuclear...

...There may come a day when we're all driving around in electric cars that get recharged at nuclear power plants...

...Ever since last spring's Earth Day, when the USCEA produced flashy posters and brochures propounding a benign nuclear ecology, the green theme has become increasingly pivotal to the industry's propaganda campaign...

...According to SECC, substituting nuclear plants for all existing power facilities would reduce greenhouse gases by only about 5 per cent...

...When it comes to cleaner and greener energy technologies, efficiency and renewable sources represent the sane energy path—if we can compel our leaders to follow it...

...Since the 1970s, the industry has used the term "permissible" for those releases of radiation authorized by the Government and determined by cost/benefit analysis to pose an "acceptable risk" to public Frankly, I don't believe any of the new generation of reactors is inherently safe...

...pan and the United States, and Gofman calculates that almost half a million cancer deaths and just as many nonfatal cancers may eventually result from Chernobyl's fallout in Europe and the Soviet Union alone...

...Whenever lawsuits or bad press pose a threat, the nuclear industry rolls out an esteemed Ph.D., invariably cited as an "independent" source, to offer opinions consistent with the industry's point of view...

...Such optimism is clearly unrealistic and dangerous...

...When USCEA says "no emissions," it really means "no greenhouse gases," or no emissions worth mentioning...

...The West's economic engine will be fueled by electric power, we are told, and a new generation of nuclear plants is our only hope of doing this without dirtying the skies...

...Either way, the cheapest way is to use the electricity we already have far more efficiently...

...fed the media a steady diet of exaggerated horror stories...

...The authors have apparently concluded that all is well at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl—and always has been...

...And he glosses over the problems of nuclear energy...

...But as oil supplies dwindle and become more costly, the economy and the political system face difficult decisions regarding sustainable energy use...

...Fortunately, nuclear power is not the only available alternative...

...officials say that nothing like Chernobyl exists in the United States...

...The U.S...

...The Bush Administration has done little to redress the imbalance and continues to subsidize nuclear power above all other energy sources...

...But the construction of nuclear plants in the United States requires at least twelve years, and the "new generation" of nuclear plants is barely onto blueprints— as much a pie-in-the-sky concept as nuclear proponents assign to solar energy...

...Though the new breed of reactors seems headed for regulatory acceptance, some seasoned engineers remain skeptical...

...You can't put enough design detail down in advance to know how well a plant is going to operate...

...Nuclear power is, in fact, the most capital-intensive of all energy sources...

...Some estimates suggest that curbing worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide even marginally would require building one new power plant every two days for the next thirty-eight years...

...Some nuclear advocates contend that climate changes could ultimately claim far more human casualties and cause far greater environmental damage than any nuclear accident...

...With prompting from a former nuclear engineer, Presidential aide John Sun-unu, the Bush Administration is putting its weight behind nuclear power...

...When nuclear power supporters apply green rhetoric to battling the greenhouse effect, they ignore the fact that the automobile is the principal source of greenhouse gases...

...On the cover, nuclear power is referred to as "the environmentalists' best friend...

...Several studies show that energy efficiency is cheaper by a factor of seven to ten than operating a typical nuclear plant, even if the plant is built free...

...nuclear power plants are so wide as to extend from negligible to substantial in comparison with other risks to the population," writes John Holdren in the September 1990 Scientific American...

...Lack of clear information and consensus on radiation-related risks leads to confusion about human safety...

...Since the NRC has no plans to monitor radiation levels at these disposal sites, the chances for abuse are substantial...

...Gofman concurs: "The fact that there's a wide range of uncertainty in current risk-estimates does not justify a retreat to wishful thinking...

...Editors who buy USCEA's sales pitch routinely indulge in selective quoting, sensationalism, trivialization, or other kinds of misrepresentation of nuclear issues...

...nuclear has proved that it can coexist peacefully with the environment...

...Judging by appearances, of course, nuclear power is cleaner than fossil fuels...

...According to the Council's official media brochure, Mission, Methods, and Benefits, the primary function of USCEA is to "marshal research, advertising, media, and public relations...

...The key strategem of nukespeak is to turn reality on its head, to make irrational policy seem rational...

...While acknowledging that high-level radiation exposure does pose a threat, the industry insists that low-level radiation is safe because there's a "threshold" of exposure below which no hazard exists...

...It's exactly the wrong kind of study to do...

...Not one of the studies offered unequivocal support for the theory...

...As early as 1974, The New York Times exposed the Atomic Energy Commission's ten-year effort to suppress research findings on safety and health risks associated with nuclear energy...

...We're talking about an absurd trade-off...

...The nuclear industry has rightly pegged coal as a major source of sooty smoke, smog, greenhouse gases, and acid rain, all of which are absent from nuclear energy production...

...A September 10, 1990, news release from USCEA stated, "Nuclear energy is the only major source of electricity—other than hydroelectric dams—that does not emit greenhouse gases or other pollutants...

...But that day will be a long way off...

...The very size of the uncertainty is itself a significant liability...

...People dislike such terms as "passively safe," "inherently safe," "user friendly," and "standardized designs...

...No safe method of containing high-level waste has been found, and any attempt to curb global warming with more nuclear power would mean a corresponding increase in such radwaste...

...nuclear plants in the next fifteen years runs as high as 45 per cent...

...But the Chernobyl explosion produced radioactive clouds that sent fallout as far as JaNuclear power is the most capital-intensive of all energy sources...

...In the real world, such plants routinely produce several hundred varieties of fission products, some of which are gaseous—the kryptons and the xenons...

...Seitz lavishes praise on nuclear power—the only way to achieve "cleaner air and economic growth...

...Consider the Forbes article of June 11, 1990, called "The Greenest Form of Power," by Fleming Meeks and James Drummond...

...This clean domestic source of power lessens the risk of energy dependence on foreign sources...

...The industry's main strategy is to declare the reactors "inherently safe," based on a generic, modular design that would include "natural" control features...

...Thomas Cochran of the National Resources Defense Council told The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that, by NRC logic, "it is 'below regulatory concern' to randomly fire a bullet into a crowded Manhattan street on the basis that the individual risk to a person in New York City is less than one in several million...

...Compared to fossil fuels, nuclear power produces far more lethal pollution and is already moving toward sacrificing a safe food chain for millennia...

...Economist Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute agrees but emphasizes cost-competitiveness in the energy marketplace...

...By the NRC's own estimates, the chance of "a severe core meltdown" occurring at one of the 112 licensed U.S...

...But posing these stark alternatives assumes that no benign solution exists...

...This year, Jay Gould, formerly a West-inghouse employee and member of the Environmental Protection Agency's science advisory board, provided evidence that the Government was running a disinformation campaign in which EPA press releases were presented as scientific reports...

...The Nuclear Regulatory Commission documented more than 30,000 "mishaps" at nuclear plants in the United States between 1979 and 1987...

...Gofman devoted an entire chapter of his 1990 book, Radiation-Induced Cancer from Low-Dose Exposure, to a careful review of each paper cited by Sagan and other hormesis proponents...

...You have to look at all the ways to get electricity and pick the cheapest," Lovins says...

...provide a more favorable business climate at the Federal, state, and local levels now and in the future...

...Though centralized hard-tech energy options have dominated the media, a 1989 poll indicated that almost 80 per cent of American voters ranked funding of renewable sources—solar and wind power—as top budget priorities for the Department of Energy, and preferred by a margin of three-to-one using electricity more efficiently rather than building new power plants...

...That's why nuclear power actually makes global warming worse...

...Despite the growing popularization of such theories in the mass media, the public's concern about radiation hazards continues to bedevil the nuclear industry...

...Deregulating portions of this waste as "below regulatory concern" will save the industry an estimated $1 billion in waste management costs over the next two decades...

...And the difficulty of getting rid of radioactive waste renders all talk of "clean" nuclear power irrelevant...

...You can define 'cheapest' in narrow economic terms or add in uncounted environmental costs...

...But when one considers the total nuclear fuel cycle, much greater quantities of radon and other radioactive gases are emitted in the mining and milling of uranium, before the fuel even reaches a nuclear reactor...

...But the report had serious flaws...

...But then comes the more devious claim: "A coal-fired electric plant spews more radioactive pollution into the air than a nuclear plant," as Reader's Digest put it last August...

...Safe threshold" is the underlying rationale for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's recent move to declare some low-level radwastes "below regulatory concern"—a decision that would allow nuclear facilities to dump radioactive garbage at any municipal landfill or incinerator...

...The Council has called on politicians, utility managers, business executives, and university scientists to "reexamine nuclear's environmental benefits"—and spread "the good news...

...And when new studies about health risks come out, the industry twists the results to its own advantage...

...Energy efficiency is much cheaper, even if the nuclear plant is built free...

...The NCI study didn't look at other environmental sources of cancer, such as chemical plants, in control counties," says John Gofman, a physician and professor of medical physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and former associate director of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory...

...As Alan Miller and Irving Mintzer wrote in the June 1990 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "Nuclear power would not reduce the risks of global warming for many years...

...These radioactive gases are released daily from nuclear plants at "permissible" (NRC-sanctioned) levels...

...Instead of energy efficiency, the propagandists speak only of conservation, a term most Americans associate with privation and discomfort...

...It only makes sense to choose an energy source that doesn't have a harmful end-product," says Gofman...

...No emissions—that's what two top USCEA officials told us...

...USCEA works constantly to determine which images and phrases incline public opinion toward nuclear power...

...The primary obstacle is not the industry, which has an excellent track record, but public perception," says Scott Peters, USCEA's manager of media services...

...It's true that coal contains uranium and that coal-fired plants create radioactive emissions...

...It's misleading to say they are.' health...

...Recent administrations, however, have taken the opposite route...

...The industry's seasoned media-relations arm, known until 1987 as the Nathaniel Mead is a free-lance writer who specializes in health, politics, and the environment...

...If 400 nuclear power plants were built (possibly enough to make some impact on global warming)," notes Scott Denman of the Washington-based Safe Energy Communications Council (SECC), "approximately five radwaste dumps the size of the proposed Yucca Mountain (Nevada) site would have to be built—an extremely difficult technical problem and a near political impossibility...

...Years...

...by Frederick Seitz, a prominent physicist, in the August 1990 Reader's Digest...

...Polling data gathered by USCEA this year suggest that people want nuclear plants to be "safer," "new and improved," and to have "advanced" designs...

...This glowing pro-nuclear promise—note the word "clean" in each of the two sentences—plays on some acute public fears...

...Against that backdrop, the energy conglomerates have mounted an intense media campaign to persuade the public and policymakers of the need for nuclear power...

...Spearheading the propaganda effort is the U.S...

...From every angle, the industry paints nuclear power as the bright hope of a hightech, growth-oriented future...

...Council for Energy Awareness (USCEA...

...Also, "radioactive fallout could have been carried from the nuclear plants to nearby control counties, making them look relatively worse," Gofman notes...

...Government has systematically downplayed the hazards of nuclear power...

...They may be safer in some respects, but it's misleading to say they're safe, period...

...Unlike coal- and oil-fired plants, nuclear generators don't produce smoke or other emissions rich in carbon dioxide...

...None of my colleagues take this kind of study very seriously," Gofman adds...

...Equally potent is the industry's recruitment of academic scientists whose credibility, in the public eye, far exceeds that of an explicitly corporate team of "experts...

...Long lead times for reactor construction definitively bar nuclear power from any environmental scenario...

...For instance, he says of the nuclear-waste problem: "The spent fuel remains radioactive for years...

...The most extreme instance of unrealistic optimism among the "experts" is the view that beneficial health effects may result from low doses of ionizing radiation— a theory known as "hormesis...

...Frankly, I don't believe any of the new generation should be called inherently safe," says Greg Minor, an engineer who worked with General Electric for sixteen years before joining a nuclear consulting firm...

...The NRC's assumption of "acceptable risk" is one incidence of cancer for every 100,000 people...

...But a more intractable problem involves optimistic interpretations of data used to determine risk—a practice less likely to be detected and rebuked...

...But nuclear power plants are by no means a "smokeless" antidote to air pollution...

...But such speculative concepts as "safe threshold" and "repair" are, in Gofman's view, "a misuse of science in the service of nuclear politics...

...The device for making this happen is "nukespeak," the use of manipulative messages aimed at achieving public acceptance of nuclear power...

...One of the more egregious examples is an article called, "Must We Have Nuclear Power...

...Thus, energy conglomerates now promote nuclear power as among the cleanest energy sources available...

...But I believe it will be used very, very opportunistically as proof that nuclear facilities don't hurt anyone...

...Figuring in this initial step, the amount of airborne radioactive pollution produced in the overall operation of any one nuclear plant far exceeds that which a coal-fired plant produces," says Gofman...

...And despite a popular belief that the nuclear industry entered a terminal tailspin after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, nuclear power is poised for a major revival...

...This is based, in part, on the idea that the body "repairs" such damage to its DNA...

...Altogether, the ranges of estimated hazards to public health from...

...The article begins by saying that since the 1970s and 1980s, when "antinuclear groups...

...By spending your dollar on the expensive option instead of the cheap option, you get extra greenhouse emissions that wouldn't have been created if the best buy had been chosen first...

...A decade of grim warnings from scientists points to excessive fossil-fuel burning as a cause of global warming...

...Many climatologists say we may have only ten years before the greenhouse effect runs irretrievably out of control...

...In its own glossy version of the report, sent out to major news media, the USCEA stated that the conclusions were not surprising to the scientific community, "which believes health risks posed by nuclear energy plants are virtually nil...

...Try hundreds of thousands of years...

...Ronald Reagan slashed R&D for energy efficiency by 70 per cent, and for renewable energy sources by 85 per cent...

...Having developed a new generation of reactors, the industry hopes to persuade utilities to order new plants—something they haven't done in more than fifteen years...

...It is a clean energy form in most respects...

...The 1990 report of the National Academy of Sciences committee on the biological effects of ionizing radiation used animal research to justify lowering risk estimates by two- to ten-fold for low-level radiation exposure, Gofman notes...

...Since then, many critics have accused Federal officials of abusing the science of radiation and health...

...The Persian Gulf crisis has once again highlighted the vulnerability of foreign oil supplies...

...And in the meantime, it could make the problem worse...

...There will be a period of learning by trial and error...

...If the public feels that it is needed, then they will overcome their qualms about it...

...Depicting reactors as kinder and gentler is a first step toward making nuclear power seem cleaner and greener...

...Nothing creates a climate for nuclear better than a perception of need," says Carl Goldstein, vice president of USCEA...

...they use half the energy to produce the same unit of gross national product...

...The options seem painfully clear: Either we revamp our petroleum-based economy or we face ever-spiraling fuel prices and a bloody war in the Middle East...

...The drive to sell nuclear power, howThe drive to revive nuclear power...

...to draw attention to the issue, generate positive editorial comment, broaden public support, and...

...NUKESPEAK BY NATHANIEL MEAD AND RAY LEE Just as America gave birth to nuclear technology in the 1940s, we can lead the world into a new era of safe, reliable, economical, and environmentally clean nuclear power in the 1990s," President George Bush recently told the Nuclear Power Assembly...

...The ultimate costs, however, would be borne by the public...

...and the first one that goes awry in ways that aren't anticipated is going to erode public confidence immediately...

...The nuclear-power industry is seizing on the Persian Gulf crisis and heightened concern about the environment...

...No one has ever seen or smelled radioactivity...

...If you spent a dollar on a nuclear plant instead, you wouldn't buy many kilowatt hours per dollar, so you wouldn't displace much coal-burning for the investment...

...The global scenario is even more disturbing: West German and Swedish scientists predict a 70 per cent chance of a Chernobyl-scale accident occurring at one of the world's nuclear plants over the next five or six years...

...How do Americans feel about nuclear power...

...He lives in Grimesland, North Carolina...

...Atomic Industrial Forum, USCEA sees public acceptance as the key to a nuclear comeback...

...West Germany and Japan, with two of the world's strongest economies, are running at twice the energy efficiency of the United States...

...Because risk estimates involving radiation exposure entail a wide range of statistical uncertainty, nuclear proponents tend to focus on the lowest part of the range, which is associated with the lowest risk...

...Some of the new plants will be built without containment and prototypes...

...And at that rate, the energy required for the complete process—mining and processing uranium, constructing facilities, enriching fuel, and disposing of rad-wastes—would conceivably result in an increase rather than a decrease in climatic devastation...

...Nukespeak involves a calculated distortion and suppression of facts about nuclear power, and corporate control over scientific research and public information...

...As the publicists succeed in refining nukespeak, mainstream coverage of nuclear power tilts toward industry...

...At USCEA, such terms as "atomic" and "power" are strictly avoided because they remind people of the Bomb and "old-generation" atomic reactors...