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!
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.
Donell Banks works at Southern Nuclear’s Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4 as a shift supervisor in Operations, but is in the process of transitioning to his newly appointed role as the daily work controls manager. He has been in the nuclear energy industry for about 11 years.
I love what I do because I have the unique opportunity to help shape the direction and influence the culture for the future of nuclear power in the United States. Every single day presents a new challenge, but I wouldn't have it any other way. As a shift supervisor, I was primarily responsible for managing the development of procedures and programs to support operation of the first new nuclear units in the United States in more than 30 years. As the daily work controls manager, I will be responsible for oversight of the execution and scheduling of daily work to ensure organizational readiness to operate the new units.
I envision a nuclear energy industry that leverages the technology of today to improve efficiency…
If Isaiah had been a nuclear engineer, he’d have loved this project. And the Trump Administration should too, despite the proposal to eliminate it in the FY 2018 budget.
The project is a massive factory near Aiken, S.C., that will take plutonium from the government’s arsenal and turn it into fuel for civilian power reactors. The plutonium, made by the United States during the Cold War in a competition with the Soviet Union, is now surplus, and the United States and the Russian Federation jointly agreed to reduce their stocks, to reduce the chance of its use in weapons. Over two thousand construction workers, technicians and engineers are at work to enable the transformation.
Carrying Isaiah’s “swords into plowshares” vision into the nuclear field did not originate with plutonium. In 1993, the United States and Russia began a 20-year program to take weapons-grade uranium out of the Russian inventory, dilute it to levels appropriate for civilian power plants, and then use it to produce…
The electoral college will soon confirm a surprise election result, Donald Trump. However, in the electricity world, there are fewer surprises – physics and economics will continue to apply, and Republicans and Democrats are going to find a lot to like about nuclear energy over the next four years.
In a Trump administration, the carbon conversation is going to be less prominent. But the nuclear value proposition is still there. We bring steady jobs to rural areas, including in the Rust Belt, which put Donald Trump in office. Nuclear plants keep the surrounding communities vibrant.
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.