Tokaimura and the media

[Susan Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

Below is an editorial from the October 26 Oak Ridger--informed
commentary on the state of reporting nuclear accidents. --Susan
Gawarecki

Tokaimura and the media: A search for improvement in nuclear accident
reportage 

The criticality incident at the uranium processing plant in Tokaimura,
Japan, offered an opportunity to reassess media reporting of nuclear
accidents. Has there been change, improvement since Three Mile Island
and Chernobyl, granted these were significantly different and immensely
more serious accidents?

One certainty: If the measuring stick for coverage is the number of
persons killed and/or injured, nuclear accidents will, for the
forseeable furture, always get inflated attention.  Compare, for
example, coverage of Tokaimura where only a few were killed with
coverage of the earthquake in Taiwan, the two occurring within days of
each other. In this country at least, although the earthquake got more
media space and time, Tokaimura was not all that far behind in volume of
coverage.

The mysterious, unseen nature of radiation, the uncertainty of the
long-term consequences of exposure only increase and prolong media
attention. Nor are studies showing long-term effects not as serious as
feared likely to change things.
Example: the just-concluded National Academy of Sciences study on
servicemen exposed to early nuclear tests which showed no significant
statistical increase in incidence of cancer or other diseases.

Reporting from Tokaimura indicates that "spew" remains the verb of
choice to describe what radiation does in an accident. Example: A report
by Shihoko Goto of Associated Press: "Workers at the plant mistakenly
set off the reaction
early Thursday, spewing radioactive gas into the air." Also, in other
reports, radiation levels "skyrocketed."

Goto of AP did not, however, as many media people habitually do, modify
the references to radiation with "deadly." There are, of course,
instances when radiation is "deadly," as it was at Chernobyl to the
extreme. But there are other
adjectives that apply as well and one does not often read or hear of
"life-saving" or "life-extending" radiation as in therapy for cancer.
Nor "life-probing" radiation as used in biological research.

Some of the earliest reports of the Japanese accident hinted at least
that this was another major disaster at a nuclear power plant, of which
Japan has many and is highly dependent on for its electricity supply.
Relatively promptly, however,
the differentiation was made between power plant and reprocessing
facility.

Within hours there were some relatively accurate and lucid explanations
of how an unplanned criticality like that at Tokaimura could have
occurred. Also, there was proper emphasis on the fact that once the
criticality stops, the "spewing" of radiation stops also, although in
this case the spewing was prolonged, ironically, by a cooling system
which in normal operations is a safeguard.

In virtually all of the first reports from Japan there were references
to this as the "worst" or "most serious" accident ever in Japan.
However, none of these reports that I heard or read explained either how
many other accidents there had been and/or what was their severity. As I
have admonished my university journalism students: "Context! Context!!
Context!!!"

But, big on the positive side, in the same Associated Press report
referred to above, was this: "'Reported levels of radiation at the scene
were nothing like that at the world's worst nuclear disaster at
Chernobyl,' said Dr. Richard Toohey,
a radiation safety expert with the Radiation Emergency Assistance Center
and Training Site in Oak Ridge, Tenn."

Thank you Dr. Toohey and thank possibly also the post-Three Mile Island
creation of Scientists Institute for Public Information which amassed a
list of hundreds of experts in all scientific fields who are readily
available, as Dr. Toohey
was for AP, for consultation about any scientific incident or issue
making news. SIPI, formed specifically by scientists concerned about
misreporting of that 1979 reactor accident in Pennsylvania, is now
defunct but it lives on as "Media
Resource Service: Linking journalists and scientists," at Research
Triangle Park, N.C.

And there was another major link with Oak Ridge. The previous nuclear
accident most comparable to what happened at Tokaimura happened at the
Y-12 Plant in June 1958. There also a criticality occurred when workers
also poured the wrong fluid into the wrong container causing radioactive
material to, well, spew, this by far the "worst" and one of the very few
nuclear accidents to occur at local nuclear facilities.

Also on the plus side, none of the reports I read or heard used the word
"meltdown," of which there was, of course, utterly no danger -- not even
any relevance -- at Tokaimura. A nuclear reactor was not involved there
other than
indirectly as the materials being reprocessed had come from spent
reactor fuel.

Thus more the happy surprise that "meltdown" did not erroneously creep
into the reporting, especially considering how this term has now entered
the language in a wide variety of non-nuclear references, of which I've
amassed a small
collection.

Consider, just within recent weeks: 

"Government pretends to be in a moral meltdown over fraud by the tobacco
industry" -- George Will in a column published here on Oct. 4.

"His obduracy ... is symptomatic of the mentality that has produced the
meltdown of relations between umpires and a game that ..." -- George
Will again in a column about Jerry Crawford, president of the Major
League Umpires Association printed here on Aug. 5.

And also:"Social meltdown," in reference to the message of the book
"Blindness" by Portuguese novelist Saramago; "a morally-charged meltown
of sin, repentance," in reference to a national condition that New York
Times writer Peter
Applewhite felt Kenneth Starr had dragged the nation into a year ago;
"sexual meltdown," Ellen Goodman's term for all the exposes of the
private lives of public officials also about a year ago; and even our
own music reviewer Becky Ball
who, in a review of a concert by the Blair String Quartet in February
1997, wrote, "Just when the sounds were about to get too gritty, too
mean, as Beethoven was prone to be, a beautiful llyrical passage would
induce a meltdown."

Further of significance relative to nuclear terminology entering the
language in other guises was a recent CNN Entertainment News comment
that some artist or actor -- I missed the specific name -- hoped that a
recent appearance,
or possibly recording, would prove"a breeder reactor" for his/her
popularity.

And, in a financial report on WUOT-FM on Oct. 15, a reference to a stock
market "melt up." -- RDS

Richard D. Smyser is founding editor of The Oak Ridger.
-- 
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Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director
Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, Inc.
136 South Illinois Avenue, Suite 208
Oak Ridge, Tennessee  37830
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