Thursday, May 31, 2012

Chernobyl and Fukushima: Video by WNA


A recent report was issued by the World Health Organization about health effects from Fukushima Daiichi.  The news is mostly good, but mixed. The bad news is that infants in two areas must be monitored for thyroid cancer because their risk of such cancers may have increased.  For others in Japan and the rest of the word, the report had excellent news: negligible health effects can be expected in the civilian population.

But how do you tell people good news?  Or even mixed news? Or anything except the "worst disaster the world has ever known" fear-mongers?

The World Nuclear Association has made an excellent effort to get the good news out, and this video by the World Nuclear Association is well-made and accurate.

Accurate Versus Believable

However, is accurate the same as believable?  Unfortunately, they are not the same.  I would say this video is accurate, but people will not necessarily believe it.  If I didn't know anything about nuclear energy,  I might watch this video and think:
"Nuclear opponents think that hundreds of thousands of people will die from these accidents, and these proponents think nobody's going to die.  Sounds extreme, both of them.  Sounds like it's all propaganda, from one side or another."
Any of my readers have ideas on how to make this good news more believable?  What parts of this video were convincing, and what parts were less convincing?

I also recommend Rod Adams post about this video: Exaggerated myths about nuclear accidents CAUSE negative health effects.


2 comments:

jimwg said...

"Nuclear opponents think that hundreds of thousands of people will die from these accidents, and these proponents think nobody's going to die.  Sounds extreme, both of them.  Sounds like it's all propaganda, from one side or another."

If I had a contract to sell nuclear power, I'd simply feed the public the chart with lines depicting each industry's worker/public mortality rates in regular operations/accidents (heck, throw in some non-energy industries for good measure) over fifty years time and let the stats do the talking. The nuclear line would almost effectively be zero -- just like our claims should still be -- while the other lines would be so almost off the chart that it'd be the height of public health concern hypocrisy to perfer others over nuclear. We don't need no propaganda, just easy to digest facts to win the hearts and common senses of the public.

James Greenidge
Queens NY

Steve Aplin said...

for some reason, I just don't like the scary music that goes with the video. I know it's there to underline the point that scary music is what anti-nukes use to compensate for the absence of facts to back up their arguments.

But every time I hear music like that in an informational video I get the feeling somebody is trying to scare me about something, and I automatically distrust what's said. I bet I'm not the only one.

Take away the scary music at the beginning, and this is an excellent video.