Skip to main content

CNA Stands Firm on Public Service Advertising

From the CBC:
An organization that represents the Canadian nuclear industry says it has no plans to pull ads that promote nuclear energy despite a formal complaint by a handful of environmental groups.

Murray Elston, president of the Canadian Nuclear Association, said the nuclear industry is safe and he is confident that the Competition Bureau will not find any problems with its ads.

"I'm not changing the ads. The industry is very safe. It is very clean," he said Tuesday.
Watch the ads and decide for yourself. And while you're at it, you might as well watch NEI's latest ad too:



UPDATE: NEI's Scott Peterson shared this note on a similar experience NEI had several years back:
We've been down this road before in the U.S. after a challenge by NRDC of NEI's advertising in the late 1990s.

The NEI case was heard by the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau and ultimately sent to the Federal Trade Commission, which in 1999 ruled that NEI was not engaged in unfair or deceptive advertising practices as alleged by NRDC.

The FTC’s ruling was appropriate given that the industry was simply exercising its right of free speech to provide information to policymakers about the benefits of nuclear technology.

NEI believed that its advertisements were appropriate first-amendment communications targeted to policymakers in forums that principally reach those who set national policy on energy and environmental issues.

We agreed with the FTC that our advertisements address important public policy matters in a manner targeted to reach legislators and other opinion leaders. As the FTC noted, the advertising was not directed to publications in states where consumers can choose their electricity suppliers.

It is undisputed that there are no greenhouse gas emissions from producing electricity at nuclear power plants. Although the NAD applied a lifecycle test to determine whether emissions resulting from the uranium fuel production process at a separate facility should be applied to the production of electricity, the FTC concluded that the NAD’s application of lifecycle analysis was inappropriate in the context of NEI’s advertising. [NEI did not make a lifecycle claim in the ad, therefore it is inappropriate to apply that test.]

In its Green Guides, FTC said in 1999 that “lifecycle analysis still is in its infancy and thus the commission lacks sufficient information on which to base guidance at this time.” FTC said NEI’s advertising does not require a lifecycle analysis.
Technorati tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments

Anonymous said…
Didn't the Federal Trade Commission order a series of NEI ads be pulled in 2000?
Anonymous said…
Please disregard my earlier comment regarding an FTC order in 2000 to pull NEI ads. A Boston
Globe
article appears to have been in error and it was picked up and repeated by others (or the Boston Globe simply repeated somebody else's error without fact checking).

Popular posts from this blog

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