Skip to main content

Asking the Expert

chinook Dr. David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University offers interesting comments at the New York Times today. It’s a meta story about a expert who has been asked by various media outlets to share his views.

“People are very worried, which is not surprising,” he said. “We want people to be able to make some kind of realistic assessment.”

In the week or so after the earthquake, he did about 30 interviews with reporters, he said, “some good, some dreadful.”

Some interviewers tried to push him to say the danger was much greater than he believed it to be. He resisted, and canceled one appearance when he realized that the host group had a strong anti-nuclear agenda.

Can’t say that’s a big surprise. As for Dr. Brenner:

Asked whether he was for or against nuclear power, he paused, then said, “I think there is a role for safe nuclear power.”

Worth a read. Dr. Brenner engages in speculation about outcomes – it seems to me to early for that, but in all, the story justifies its title: Countering Radiation Fears With Just the Facts.

---

I wrote earlier I would keep my eyes open for some dire nuclear energy editorials. Most we’ve seen have taken a positive though measured view; none have suggested just shutting everything down. So this editorial from the Chinook (Wash.) Observer should do the trick:

Lobbyists for the American atomic-energy industry might just as well resign en masse now and seek work with better prospects — perhaps inventing a perpetual-motion machine or bringing peace to the Middle East.

The rest of it gets a little muddled. Lines like this - “In fact, the latest nuclear equipment is quite safe.” – don’t help the cause, nor does this somewhat muted appreciation of natural gas:

Natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel, will be part of the answer. This does not mean we should blithely go along with a liquefied natural gas terminal at Skipanon. It is not sensible to situate giant tanks of a highly explosive substance on a nearby waterfront subject to 9.0 quakes and tsunamis.

But you take what you can get.

Chinook Bay. Nope, no place for anything that can explode.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should