By Elizabeth Harper
On the 27th January, I attended a lecture
entitled ‘In The Public Eye: Nuclear Energy and Society’, given by Malcolm
Grimston as part of The University of Manchester’s Dalton Seminar Series. This
was set to be a particularly compelling lecture because, as we all know,
nuclear has something of a PR problem and there are no clearly defined ways of
rectifying it. Grimston based his lecture on a book he is currently writing on society’s
conceptions of nuclear and the nuclear industry, and the innumerate tensions
and uncertainties that these generate.
He began the lecture by saying that the nuclear industry
does not deal with the distrust and negativity surrounding it in a very
constructive way; often ending up in an indecisive state of ‘rubbing hands
together’ and not proactively addressing the claims made against it. He argued
that this is because of the way in which ‘people’ respond to the statements
released by governments and companies like EDF that aim to inform and calm
people. This can be seen in the case of the Fukushima evacuations where the
government wanted to quell national and international anxiety by providing
‘safe zones’ which, ironically, served to inflame ‘people’s’ fear of radiation.
According to Grimston, ‘people’ react perhaps quite rationally to the information put forward specifically
regarding nuclear safety: if they are told that nuclear stations are to be made
‘even more safe’, then how safe were they before, if it is possible for safety
to be improved? Through this deconstruction of what it means to be rational or
irrational, he argued that the nuclear industry and nuclear experts have to
perpetually navigate a minefield of semantic eggshells in fear of inadvertently
worsening ‘people’s’ already apprehensive sentiments towards nuclear.
| A still from little known TV animation, 'The Simpsons'. |
This is problematic because the media and the general public
are not the same thing and they cannot be conceived of in the same way by the nuclear
industry, including highly respected academics like Grimston. There is a chain
of understanding that starts with industry, which passes through the media and
then is consumed by the public. As a result, the media can be considered to be
more powerful than the public because they are the ones who take the
information given by the industry and relay it in any way that suits their own,
oftentimes, reactionary, ideological or political agenda. This not only
encompasses nuclear power but also information and statistics regarding
immigration or benefits claimants.
One obvious example
of such an outlet is The
Daily Mail, which only a few days ago published an article on how fallout
and radiation from Chernobyl will affect our crops this harvest. As a result, the
public read and can be swayed by headlines that scaremonger, distort facts and
fuel ignorance of nuclear, producing the paranoid (ir)rational responses that
Grimston discussed. I would argue, therefore, that members of the public are
not to blame for their warped conceptions of radiation (amongst other nuclear
problems) because they consume news headlines or Hollywood films that tell them
otherwise. If the public were not
subjected to such sensationalised stories that feature in the tabloids, some of
the most read newspapers in circulation and online, then it is much more likely
that there would be a positive embracement of nuclear energy. As a result, the
public and the media cannot be described under a vague umbrella label such as
‘people’.
This is important to not only give some credit back to an
interested and interesting public who, it is becoming increasingly apparent,
are misinformed and distrustful of nuclear because of the media (71% of 23,231
people from 23 countries in 2011 after Fukushima wanted to replace nuclear and
coal with renewable energy sources), but also to improve the image of the
nuclear industry itself.[1]
It is hard to feel sympathetic for an industry where high profile academics do
not critically separate the media from the public and show no active attempt to
engage with the media to shine a light on the inflammatory journalism produced.
Even though I, a humanities graduate, had a few of my own misconceptions
addressed by the lecture, none of what Grimston said seemed to be news to the
majority of the people there, evident from the knowing tutting and chortling
taking place. As a result, the lecture actually ended up casting a scornful
gaze on the public who through, perhaps, no fault of their own, do not know any
better. This was cemented for me, when Grimston provided each case study with
an example of ‘people’s’ (ir)rational reactions to safety measures; a sentence
or two in the voice of ‘people’ that supposedly summed up their interpretations
of various situations, mostly regarding Fukushima. As he read them out to a
chuckling room, they sounded like they could have been taken for tabloid
headlines. Instead of being critical of this, ‘people’, that indiscriminate
homogeneous mass of everything outside of the industry, were merely mocked.
I argue that the most effective way for people who work in
nuclear to ensure the future implementation and success of new nuclear is by
directly addressing media headlines, for example this one from The
Daily Express or this one, again, from The
Daily Mail. Accept that the public have been misinformed by what they have
seen and heard in the newspapers, on the television and at the cinema and
confront the sensationalised stories directly. Nuclear has often been accused
of secrecy and of lacking transparency, and this is becoming a self-fulfilled
prophecy. I would argue that the industry must actively and publically engage
in a much more open and critical dialogue and debate with the outlets and
ideological apparatuses that construct what the public have come to know, understand
and, ultimately, trust.
