re: News

["Coon, Kenneth M.(KCOON)" <KCOON@apsc.com>]

Here is a good example of what is being suggested as a response to the 
 Jonesboro (Ark)
Sun article......as some of you may well know...our Commercial Plant (Palo 
Verde Nuclear) made the news because of a stuck fuel bundle (Since removed 
without incident). Some
media attention did play on fears ("Into the belly of the Atomic Beast", 
"Averted a meltdown".....) which prompted a technician to respond (and it 
was actually published, not as an editorial comment but as a byline!):

STORY WHIPS UP FEARS ABOUT NUCLEAR PLANTS
(By Wade Meldrum)
At 5:15 a.m. I step into the cool pre-dawn desert air. Fully aware that the 
odyssey I was about to embark on could well be my last. My heart races as I 
hear a rapid series of explosions, keenly aware of the 2,300 cubic inches of 
volatile flammable liquids stored a scant 4 feet away. Strapped into a 
rolling napalm bomb, I streak over the landscape. The wind whips my hair 
wildly as I race through the night at 66 feet per second. The tension mounts 
as I realize one nail, any sharp object, could strip me of control, sending 
me careening into a crevasse filled with raging white water. Minutes later, 
I reach my destination. The explosions quit now. I sit and wait until the 
white van pulls up. Then the whole trip starts again.
As you can see, anyone with a dictionary and some spare time can take a 
mundane experience and really make it sound good. (I think this started with 
fishing stories.) One of the latest "fish stories" I've seen was in the 
April 4 Gazette titled "Into the belly of the atomic beast." Please.
If reporter Charles Kelly found a guided tour of a shutdown reactor 
containment building that unsettling then just thinking about something 
really scary, like using a public rest room at a ballgame, must have his 
"heart palpitating like a Geiger counter."
I only want to suggest that if Mr. Kelly wants to continue to write these 
thrilling but misleading stories, they should be listed under science 
fiction in the bookstore.


Mr. Meldrum wrote this to the Gazette as a concerned citizen and not as a 
representative of the Utility.