Suchergebnisse

Scientific studies generally conclude that all the hazards of nuclear power combined, including accidents & waste disposal, will cause an average of about 10 deaths per year in the US -- even the antinuclear activists claim only 130. Yet polls show that the public views nuclear power as more of a threat than many other hazards that kill many thousands annually. As a consequence hundreds of millions of dollars are spent per life saved in protecting people from nuclear radiation while disdaining to spend one-thousandth as much to protect against other hazards. Coal-fired, rather than nuclear, plants are built, even though all studies agree that public misunderstanding is thus killing thousands of people & wasting billions of dollars each year. The media is blamed for this misinformation, & the following examples of journalistic misrepresentation are discussed: overcoverage; use of inflammatory language; failure to provide appropriate comparisons to aid understanding, implying that radiation is not well understood; using off-beat rather than reputable scientists as information sources, implying falsely that the scientific community is split on the dangers of radiation; treating strictly scientific issues (eg, health effects of radiation) as political issues; failing to transmit scientific consensus to the public; propagating antiscience; exaggerating dangers of nuclear accidents; failing to tell the public that there was never any substantial danger from the Three Mile Island accident; exaggerating the dangers of radioactive waste (which are actually thousands of times less than those of long-lasting carcinogens released in coal burning); & failure to put nuclear risks into perspective with other normal risks. AA