Yesterday I was directed to an article about nuclear energy which was effectively dominated by one side of the argument. As far as I am concerned this is the worst kind of journalism because it is the journalists duty to challenge contributions. Feel free to take a look:
http://www.bloomingtonalternative.com/articles/2011/11/05/10834
I decided to write to the editor, to challenge them on this article and here is my letter:
Dear Editor, I was recently directed to read an article published in your on-line publication titled "'Nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water'". I was curious as to the mission of your publication and I note the description says "It is a mission-driven publication whose goal is to promote and celebrate progressive social change and independent media in Bloomington." This confuses me because in this article I mention you seem to have chosen to allow it to become a mouthpiece for Dr Caldicott rather than being a piece of genuine journalism. My experience of good journalism is that it requires one to be balanced and critical of the inclusion of information. There seems to have been no attempt at balanced journalism here. For example the statements implying Fukushima is worse than Chernobyl are not challenged, only re-enforced without facts. The statement that "No dose of radiation is safe" is blatantly incorrect, otherwise it would not be possible to live in places like Colorado where there is significant background radiation from the granite rocks. If you doubt perhaps you might read this article from the Colorado Department of Public Health: http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/rf/riskperspect.htm or if you don't have the time to read perhaps an infographic: http://xkcd.com/radiation/ We are all exposed to radiation throughout our lives, as for myself I fly 20,000 miles a year, some people regularly have X-rays or Chemotherapy which is substantially more effective. We survive, our bodies repair damage from radiation and as far as I have read the isotopes that left the site were relatively short lived. No one has died as a result of Fukushima, the Fukushima plant was designed in the 1970s and had not been upgraded to meet current standards. How about the radiation from burning coal? This is often overlooked but the radioactive emissions from a coal fired plant are actually more substantial than those of an operating nuclear power plant. In addition to this many people are killed in coal mining each year, in 2004 over 6000 people died mining coal worldwide and 28 in the US alone. Our world is full of natural radiation perhaps you might review the following video which makes things very much clearer about how much radioactivity there is in our atmosphere: http://www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao-hashimoto/ Respected journalist George Monbiot has challenged Dr Caldicott before for example: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/interrogation-of-helen-caldicotts-responses/ and http://www.monbiot.com/category/nuclear/ and also http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/evidence-meltdown/ I am not actively involved on any side of the energy industry, I am just a supporter of science and balanced reason. The information I have seen leads me to support nuclear because it is relatively clean and relatively safe. I agree there is a concern over nuclear waste storage, which is why I am a casual supporter of Thorium energy which was much overlooked because it has no relationship to nuclear weapons, which was important in the early development of nuclear energy in the US, Russia and France. I challenge your publication to make a further article which takes the other side of the story, one which challenges these assertions and which contains verified facts. Yours Sincerely, Bob Hannent