ABC News Intern Update

It looks as if ABC News is going to air the first part of its "Loose Nukes on Main Street" story this evening on today's edition of ABC World News Tonight. As we've mentioned before, what we've seen so far doesn't lend us a whole lot of confidence that we're going to see anything but a well-packaged piece of sensationalism -- click here to see exactly what I'm talking about.

Come back later this evening after I've had a chance to view the report.

UPDATE: ABC News just aired a report on World News Tonight that served as more of an overview for the series, and didn't share too many details. Click here for the text version of the story that aired tonight. Click here for the home page for the series at ABC News.com. Finally, click here to see photos of the ABC News interns who took part in the piece of the investigation that dealt with the test reactors. To review, their actions in pursuit of the story weren't exactly the most professional. Here's what Earl Holland of Ohio State University told Inside NEC about his experiences with an intern that tried to catch Holland trying to contradict himself during a followup interview:

But at one point during the conversation, he said he told her that her question had been answered by the reactor staff during her June 22 visit. "There was a pregnant pause for about 15 or 20 seconds" before she acknowledged that she had been at the site, he said.

Holland said he responded, "You were wearing a denim skirt and a red top and you have dark brown hair, and you said this, and you said that, and here's the license number of your car."

It doesn't sound to me like these "undercover" reporters actually passed unnoticed. We'll have more later in the week as the reports are issued.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Our friend Stewart Peterson has some other thoughts.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Energy, Technology, Homeland Security, ABC News

Comments

Anonymous said…

Wow. Lessee, physicists, engineers, and their staff vs "journalists". Wonder which set posseses more intelligence. Oops, forgot, the "journalists" have a wide open "stuck on stupid" conduit.

October 13, 2005 at 5:11 PM

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog