Re: Union Trib article

[Keith Welch <welch@jlab.org>]

I can appreciate your comments, Franz.  Also, Scott.  And don't get me wrong, I don't want a pile of mill tailings in may backyard either.  But read Ruth Weiner's comments too.  I
don't expect a newspaper article to include dose numbers or quote standards that nobody's ever heard of.  But in the absence of those things, the writer then has the job of
describing in qualitative terms the nature of the hazard - so he not only reports the information, but 'shapes' the story.  And the story is shaped the way most of these stories
are:  There's a big, nasty,  insidious, secret, deadly, government sponsored, RADIOACTIVE monster out there that's poisoning us.

The problem is that we can't seem to come down in the middle somewhere.  To get the attention necessary to clean up a site like this, people seem to need to be scared to death of
it.  If you try to temper the fear-monger's allegations with some common sense, you're obviously part of the government conspiracy that caused the problem, and you're trying to cover
up or trivialize the problem.

One point about the article that I agree with.  Our government is not doing a very good job of handling radioactive/nuclear waste issues overall.  But a good portion of that problem
is fed by the problem of the irrational fears related to the material - our lawmakers react to their constituents.  The irrational fears are supported and reinforced by the slanted
and misleading stories in the media.

I'll also concede this.  It is really quite difficult to produce a news story about hazardous materials that doesn't induce fear.  Think about it.  You'd almost have to come off
sounding like you liked mill tailings to avoid saying scary things.  So the poor news people have an almost impossible task.  They are not highly schooled or skilled in HP.  It's
easy to see how the information they have to work with winds up sounding like it does.  A nuclear article almost has to sound either pro or con by nature.  Not too many pro-nuc
newsies out there.


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