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NUCLEAR_YELLOW

                                              October 19, 2014

It can take quite a long time to get an accurate
assessment of how bad things are when something like
a Fukushima incident occurs-- what leaked, how much,
who was exposed, what are the odds... are the sudden
influx of reports of medical issues really related to
the incident, or a result of reporting bias generated
by the publicity?-- no reasonable person, no matter
how pro-nuclear is going to rush to sound the
all-clear alert.

Notably, the anti-nuclear side seems to feel no
converse inhibitions about sounding alarms:
"Democracy Now" was racing to publish "worse than
Chernobyl!" quotes in headlines within weeks of the
accident.  And words like "disaster" have been used
awfully freely when referring to Fukushima (an
*actual* disaster is something like the earthquake
and tsunami that killed 20,000 people, and only
incidentally trashed a nuclear power plant).

Where nuclear power is concerned it often seems that
yellow journalism is the rule, not the exception--
biased language is used that would be unacceptable in
nearly any other instance, with the possible
exception of everyone's favorite, terrorism from
those damn turban-heads

There's a definite asymmetry in this debate: if a
pro-nuclear person says something that sounds silly
you can be sure you'll hear people sneer at it for
decades, but the anti-nuclear side is always given a
free pass.


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