Indian Point portrayed as WMD

[Franta, Jaroslav]

FYI.....



Jaro 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^



NUCLEONICS WEEK JULY 3, 2003

Riverkeeper compares Indian Point

to WMDs as ad campaign hook

To gain public support for shutting down Indian Point,

the Garrison, N.Y.-based advocacy group Riverkeeper has

been running an aggressive advertising campaign this

month that likens the plant to a weapon of mass destruction (WMD).

The ads began appearing in national newspapers and on

radio and television in mid-June. The print ad carried the

message, "What Exactly Do Weapons of Mass Destruction

Look Like?" above a picture of the Indian Point station. The

accompanying text claimed there was "no evacuation plan"

for New York City residents who live "22 miles" away from

the plant, and that a "catastrophic release of radiation" from

the station would cause "a minimum of half a trillion dollars

in damages and tens of thousands of fatalities." Some

ads have shown up in bus shelters.

For the broadcast ads, the voice-overs were narrated by

Lorraine Bracco, an actress who plays a psychiatrist on the

popular HBO TV cable show, "The Sopranos."

Both types of ads play on fears of a terrorist attack,

asserting that Indian Point has been identified as an attractive

target and that a strike on the plant could turn it into a

WMD and "render all of the city uninhabitable."

Riverkeeper's latest advertising strategy, which the group

calls a part of its "public education campaign," was to

appeal to the business community. A June 30 ad in the Wall

Street Journal asks company leaders to "help us close the

plant and remove the threat by 1) Insisting on a no-fly zone

with air patrol. 2) Calling for federalization of security at the

plant. 3) Demanding that poorly protected and highly

radioactive spent fuel be transferred into Hardened On-Site

Storage. 4) Speaking up for the permanent closure of the plant."

All of the ads encourage citizens to contact New York

Gov. George Pataki (R) and make their voices heard.

Riverkeeper this week described the WMD ads as "attention-grabbing"

and successful and said it would follow up "with

provocative postcards addressed to various decision makers

from New Yorkers explaining their opposition to Indian

Point in a tongue-in-cheek way."

The group said it will have three versions of the post-cards,

which will be dropped off in bars and restaurants

throughout the city. The cards will be addressed to Entergy

CEO Wayne Leonard, whose company runs the plant, NRC

Chairman Nils Diaz, whom the group misidentified in a

June 30 press release as "Mrs. Niles Diaz," and Michael

Brown, under secretary for Emergency Preparedness &

Response in the Department of Homeland Security.

'Ridiculous'

"A nuclear power plant cannot explode like a weapon of

mass destruction," said NRC spokesman William Beecher.

"It's a ridiculous assertion."

Beecher criticized Riverkeeper for using NRC studies that

are more than 20 years old and were, even when they origi-nated,

not considered reflective of a real accident, he said.

Diaz' schedule, circulated at NRC, includes tentative

dates in September and October to participate with Sen.

Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in town meetings in New

York on the topic of Indian Point.

Entergy spokesman Jim Steets said Riverkeeper's ads are

little more than scare-mongering. "They are not based on

fact," Steets said. "They want to give people the impression

that Indian Point is a nuclear bomb."

Steets said the ads use "misinformation" and "exaggeration"

for effect and that Riverkeeper has selectively pulled

information from various NRC and other governmental and

private-sector reports to make the ads appear fact-based.

Riverkeeper has on its Web site

(http://www.riverkeeper.org) a 13-page backgrounder that it

says provides the facts and references to support the state-ments

in its ad campaign. Steets said the TV ads "depict people

as melting into the streets of New York....Clearly their

intent is to scare people, but it's not resonating well.

Nobody endorses a scare tactic."-Jenny Weil, Washington

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