Needless to say, while I understand why editors and reporters often conflate nuclear weapons and commercial nuclear energy, it doesn't make it any less annoying when it happens. As we've pointed out in the past, generating nuclear electricity actually contributes to a more peaceful world. The best example of why that's true has to be the Megatons to Megawatts program, an effort to downblend former Soviet nuclear warheads into reactor fuel. Right now, about half of the electricity generated by our nation’s nuclear energy facilities is from fuel that was once part of the Soviet Union's Cold War nuclear arsenal.
It's a powerful story, and one that's actually part of Pandora's Promise. Here's Stewart Brand:
Thankfully, the error didn't persist for long thanks to nuclear energy consultant Brian Gutherman:
.@foxnews Why does your home page show a photo of a nuclear power plant for a story about nuclear weapons? There is no connection. @N_E_I
— Brian Gutherman (@NJNuke) June 19, 2013
And then a few minutes later ...
... And now you don't.
Thanks to Brian for the heads up, and thanks to Fox News for correcting the error so quickly.
Major kudos to Brian and NEI for springing to their feet to correct this mass misconception. Unfortunately, to way too many, nuclear plants and bombs are just sides of the same coin. Call me semi-conspiratorial, but maybe by local political experience I always had long doubts that such feature image "mismatches" are simply accidental by ignorance or incompetence in lieu a media that largely hates nuclear's guts and go out of their way coyly fanning FUD (re: the infamous Tokyo oil fire featured during Fukushima stories during and AFTER the quake) than fairly educate their public more about nukes. I'd love to see the percentage of positive/neutral nuclear plant stories against windmill/solar farms presented in the media in one year. No doubt the tallies would be shocking!
James Greenidge Queens NY
Anonymous said…
The way those cable news channels work is that whenever there's any story, they need to find something, anything to show on screen related to that story. What will they show? A mushroom cloud?
There's not a lot of pics or video available commonly for nuclear weapons. Since Fox crowd tends to try to craft a message which is pro-nuclear weapons (or, at least, the opposite of whatever Obama is for, it seems at times) , they don't want to show a nuclear explosion, as that might be a bit alarming and tend to make people watching think maybe Obama is right about arms reductions (and Obama can't be right about anything, at least to Fox News).
So, they try to show something which people readily associate with nuclear, but which doesn't appear to be too scary.
I know, it's sad, and I too wish they wouldn't conflate civilian nuclear power with weapons of mass destruction, but nuclear weapons is just a topic, at least I think, for which there is virtually no footage available.
I don't know, though, there's got to be some pics/videos of ICBM's somewhere, they could use.
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
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
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
Comments
James Greenidge
Queens NY
There's not a lot of pics or video available commonly for nuclear weapons. Since Fox crowd tends to try to craft a message which is pro-nuclear weapons (or, at least, the opposite of whatever Obama is for, it seems at times) , they don't want to show a nuclear explosion, as that might be a bit alarming and tend to make people watching think maybe Obama is right about arms reductions (and Obama can't be right about anything, at least to Fox News).
So, they try to show something which people readily associate with nuclear, but which doesn't appear to be too scary.
I know, it's sad, and I too wish they wouldn't conflate civilian nuclear power with weapons of mass destruction, but nuclear weapons is just a topic, at least I think, for which there is virtually no footage available.
I don't know, though, there's got to be some pics/videos of ICBM's somewhere, they could use.