There's a news article in the Washington Post today (1/26/12) that really captures that paper's view of the way the world works, and how it ought to work. Headlined "After Earthquake, Japan Can't Agree on the Future of Nuclear Power," Chico Harlan's piece begins:

The hulking system that once guided Japan's pro-nuclear-power stance worked just fine when everybody moved in lockstep. But in the wake of a nuclear accident that changed the way this country thinks about energy, the system has proved ill-suited for resolving conflict. Its very size and complexity have become a problem.

And what exactly is that problem?

Nearly a year after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi facility, Japanese decision-makers cannot agree on how to safeguard their reactors against future disasters, or even whether to operate them at all.

Some experts say this indecision reflects the Japanese tendency to search for, and sometimes depend on, consensus--even when none is likely to emerge. The nation’s system for nuclear decision-making requires the agreement of thousands of officials. Most bureaucrats and politicians in Tokyo want Japan to recommit to nuclear power, but they have been thwarted by a powerful minority--reformists and regional governors.

The obstruction by this "powerful minority," the Post goes on to say, has "heavy consequences": "record financial losses for major power companies and economy-stunting electricity shortages." The story warns that "Japan, once the world’s third-largest nuclear consumer, could be nuclear-free, if it is unable to win approval from local communities to restart the idled units."

Then, after musing about the "elaborate network of hand-holding" that used to govern Japan's nuclear infrastructure, Harlan slips in a fact that changes everything:

Since the March 11 accident, just enough has changed to stall that cooperation. Two-thirds of Japanese oppose atomic power. Politicians in areas that host nuclear plants are rethinking the facilities; they hold veto power over any restart. A few vocal skeptics have emerged in the government, and in the aftermath of the accident, Japan has created at least a dozen commissions and task forces for energy-related issues.

So when the pro-nuclear goals of "most bureaucrats and politicians" are "thwarted by a powerful minority," that's a sign of the dysfunctional Japanese system, with its "tendency to search for, and sometimes depend on, consensus." The fact that this "minority" actually represents the large majority of the Japanese public who oppose the technology that has rendered substantial parts of their country uninhabitable--well, that's just another roadblock that the establishment is going to have to overcome.

I was struck by this headline in the Washington Post (7/10/11):

Loss of Support for Nuclear Power Threatens Japan's Economy

There are probably a lot of things that are threatening the Japanese economy--a massive, deadly earthquake and tsunami, for instance. Or the massive nuclear disaster that resulted from that tsunami.

The news here is that Japanese officials are doing inspections of their nuclear reactors--as they've always done. The problem, apparently, is that they're doing more than that:

Under ordinary circumstances, these shutdowns would be temporary. Instead, they loom as an urgent problem for Japan, whose government--itself divided over nuclear policy--has not yet mustered the political will or the popular support necessary to restart reactors once they are idled.

The "problem" is that the government is also doing stress tests to make sure the reactors can survive major disruptions. That doesn't sound like a bad idea, given the horrendous disaster that they've just suffered. The Post describes the government's decision to call for these tests as "undermining its cause," apparently because this contradicted an earlier claim that the reactors were safe.

The problem, as defined by the Post, is a lack of political support for nuclear power, inspired by a government that wants to increase the country's reliance on safe renewable energy.  That position is what the Post is saying "threatens" the country's economy. Others might argue that a massive nuclear disaster is to blame.

The New York Times' Alan Cowell had a piece (6/2/11) about public opposition to nuclear power in Germany, and the fact that the country's political leadership has decided to establish policies that conform to that sentiment. It apparently left the Times a bit perplexed:

But the German move also raised a question whose answer seemed elusive: What is there in this land of 82 million people that has, over decades, bred an aversion to nuclear energy that seems unrivaled among its economic peers, defying its reputation for reasoned debate?

Cowell reveals that Germans overwhelmingly oppose nuclear power, especially after the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima. Anti-nuclear feelings surfaced much earlier, though:

There is little doubt that Germany's modern history has combined to produce a deep strain of risk aversion, of caution, and a dislike for surprises, all of which magnify the potential hazards of nuclear energy, producing a perception that is different from that of other major European economies like France or Britain.

Risk aversion and caution produces a "perception" that is different than in other places. I am not even sure what that means, but it doesn't sound unreasonable.

The Times wasn't the only outlet slamming Germany's anti-nukes move. The Washington Post editorial page was unimpressed with Germany's turn toward renewables--a bad idea, "since sometimes the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine." Read Miranda Spencer's recent Extra! article for a good corrective on that.

The Post added:

Instead of providing a model for greening a post-industrial economy, Germany’s overreaching greens are showing the rest of the world just how difficult it is to contemplate big cuts in carbon emissions without keeping nuclear power on the table. Panicked overreaction isn't the right response to the partial meltdowns in Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex

The lesson of Fukushima, then, should be that the world really needs nuclear power. Apparently that kind of logic is what the Post means by a more "reasoned debate"?

While the Fukushima nuclear disaster has gotten plenty of attention on network programming, the debate has consistently overlooked the most fundamental question of whether nuclear power can be harnessed safely (FAIR Blog, 3/14/11). In asking why this question remains muted, a look at their boards of directors reveals that all three major broadcast networks share at least two members with companies that produce or transmit nuclear energy.

With nuclear powerhouse General Electric as co-owner of NBC, it's not surprising that GE's CEO Jeffery Immelt and CFO Keith Sherin both sit as directors on the network's board. But it's not the only network whose board has nuclear energy connections: ABC's directors include a representative from Halliburton as well as from Edison Mission Energy. Not to be outdone, CBS, a former subsidiary of the energy giant Westinghouse, seats three board members from the nuclear energy industry's Southern Company, NSTAR and Consolidated Edison.

Can nuclear power be harnessed safely? The livelihood of these network board members depends on answering the question in the affirmative.

USA Today has a regular left-right feature between hard-right pundit Cal Thomas and TV "liberal" Bob Beckel. Today's topic? Nuclear power. And the verdict? Well, the headline tells you all you need to know.

Knee-Jerks and Nukes

Cal and Bob agree that despite the chorus of hand-wringers, it would be foolish to give up on nuclear power plants in the wake of Japan's tragedy

To give you a sense of the seriousness of the discussion, here's Beckel criticizing Joe Lieberman:

Bob: I grew up in his home state near one of the country's oldest nuclear power plants (the Connecticut Yankee plant), and in all its years of operation--like virtually every other nuclear plant in the world--not a single life-threatening event has occurred.

Cal: And you told me you used to swim in the warm water generated by that plant. No wonder you became a liberal!

I had heard Cal Thomas was funny, but not that funny.

The New York Times' reassuring reporting on the radioactive plume drifting across the U.S. continues the paper's troubling tradition of parroting comforting words from officials in the midst of modern-day environmental crises--like the environmental fallout post-9/11. Let's compare headlines:

"Radiation Over U.S. Is Harmless, Officials Say" (3/22/11)

"Workers and Residents Are Safe, Officials Say" (11/2/01)

As I have documented (Extra!, 11-12/06), in the months and years following the September 11 attacks, the Times ignored studies and voices that cast strong doubt on official proclamations that the air and dust near Ground Zero were not a serious hazard. Andrew Revkin, the Times' environmental reporter at the time who was responsible for much of the reassuring coverage, explained the stance taken by the paper:

The Times' Revkin told American Journalism Review (1–2/03), "We were, I think, bending over backwards to be sure we were reporting a risk only if we knew it, whereas others, I feel rather strongly, were flipping it the other way." Revkin cited the Daily News as an example. When asked how he thought the 9/11 health story would end, Revkin told AJR, "I think it's going to fade away." Unfortunately, the chronic health problems already measured among those exposed to Ground Zero pollution ensure that this story is going to be with us for years to come.

News outlets certainly shouldn't be spreading unnecessary panic in the aftermath of disasters. And no doubt there are many differences between the radioactive plume and Ground Zero dust and air. But the Times' failure and culpability on 9/11 reporting should have taught it something about official reassurances and role of journalists in questioning them.

The radioactive plume from Japan wafting from west to east across the U.S. is absolutely nothing to worry about, writes William J. Broad in a New York Times report today ("Radiation Over U.S. Is Harmless, Officials Say," 3/22/11) about the radiation threats posed by the Japanese nuclear plant disaster. Broad writes:

Health experts said that the plume's radiation had been diluted enormously in its journey of thousands of miles and that--at least for now, with concentrations so low--its presence will have no health consequences in the United States. In a similar way, faint radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spread around the globe and reached the West Coast in 10 days, its levels detectable but minuscule.

There are two things wrong with Broad's report:

One, he doesn't quote or even name any health experts in the piece. When he later elaborates on the claim that radiation from Fukushima will have no health consequences in the United States, he cites the Department of Energy--better known for its promotion of nuclear power than for its health expertise.

Two, in saying that small amounts of radiation are safe, Broad seems to be embracing the industry-favored threshold model of radiation risks. That view holds that below a certain level of radiation exposure, no health danger is posed.

But this is at odds with the National Academy of Sciences and several other science associations that hold there is no such threshold, and that any exposure poses some additional risk of cancer: the greater the exposure, the greater the risk. The linear, no threshold model isn't universally embraced, but is the prevailing view in scientific circles.

At the very least, if Broad is going to cite an industry-favored way of viewing radiation dangers, one that downplays the threat, isn't he obliged to explain that that is what it is, and that it is contradicted by much of the scientific establishment?

At a time when the Japanese prime minister is describing his country's nuclear crisis and the growing threat of radiation exposure as "very grave," it must have been comforting for Fox News watchers to turn on the O'Reilly Factor last night (3/17/11) to see Ann Coulter telling them that radiation is actually good for you.

Yes, Coulter told O'Reilly viewers, the evidence was right there in the media, including in the newspaper she'd once hoped would be targeted with a terror attack:

I'm citing a stunning number of physicists and from the New York Times and the Times of London, there is a growing body of evidence that radiation in excess of what the government says are the minimum amounts we should be exposed to are actually good for you and reduce cases of cancer.

The New York Times science section, for example, a few years ago reported on a study from Canada where all these women who had had tuberculosis got an inordinate number of chest X-rays. Their breast cancer rate was lower than the general population.

There were apartments put up in Taiwan in 1993 that accidentally contained an inordinate amount of cobalt-60, a radioactive substance. After 16 years 10,000 occupants of these buildings, being hit with five times what the government says is the minimum amount you should be hit with, the number of cancer cases they had about 10,000 occupants was only five cases.

Now, for the general population in that same age group, a group of 10,000 Taiwanese should have gotten about 170 cases of cancer.

I'm sure you'll be surprised to find that it takes minutes to debunk Coulter's scientific declarations on radiation. That "pro-radiation" Times science piece (11/27/01), for instance, does cite research finding that low-dose radiation can have beneficial effects-- only to note that it has been generally dismissed by scientists as flawed:

Now, some scientists even say low radiation doses may be beneficial. They theorize that these doses protect against cancer by activating cells' natural defense mechanisms. As evidence, they cite studies, like one in Canada of tuberculosis patients who had multiple chest X-rays and one of nuclear workers in the United States. The tuberculosis patients, some analyses said, had fewer cases of breast cancer than would be expected and the nuclear workers had a lower mortality rate than would be expected.

Dr. Boice said these studies were flawed by statistical pitfalls, and when a committee of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement evaluated this and other studies on beneficial effects, it was not convinced. The group, headed by Dr. Upton of New Jersey, wrote that the data ''do not exclude'' the hypothesis. But, it added, ''the prevailing evidence has generally been interpreted as insufficient to support this view.''

And that Taiwan study demonstrating that radioactive cobalt-60 built into an Taiwan apartment building protected the inhabitants from cancer? It contained a "major flaw" in that it failed to control for age--where a subsequent study that did control for age found an  increased incidence of cancer associated to the apartment building. As a summary of the literature on Wikipedia puts it:

In popular treatments of radiation hormesis, a study of the inhabitants of apartment buildings in Taiwan has received prominent attention. The building materials had been accidentally contaminated with cobalt-60 but the study found cancer mortality rates 96.4 percent lower than in the population as a whole. However, this study compared the relatively young irradiated population with the much older general population of Taiwan, which is a major flaw. A subsequent study by Hwang et al. (2006) found a significant exposure-dependent increase in cancer in the irradiated population, particularly leukemia in men and thyroid cancer in women, though this trend is only detected amongst those who were first exposed before the age of 30.

So as an increasingly critical situation in Japan demands more accurate and useful information about radiation, the Fox News Channel's biggest show featured the ignorance of Ann Coulter. Just another reason why studies have found Fox News watchers more misinformed on the issues of the day than consumers of other corporate media outlets.

The New York Times (3/17/11) presents a look at the Japanese government's lack of candor about the Fukushima nuclear disaster. At first we're given the impression that this is something cultural: "The less-than-straight talk is rooted in a conflict-averse culture that avoids direct references to unpleasantness." We don't have that problem, I guess.

Then, we're told, Japanese media are to blame: 

Left-leaning news outlets have long been skeptical of nuclear power and of its backers, and the mutual mistrust led power companies and their regulators to tightly control the flow of information about nuclear operations so as not to inflame a spectrum of opponents that includes pacifists and environmentalists.

So the too-critical media helped create this crisis of  "mutual mistrust"? The Times had previously led me to believe that the problem with Japanese media was that it was too cozy with powerful institutions.  Now I'm being told they're too critical, which makes them part of the problem.

Finally we come to this:

The close links between politicians and business executives have further complicated the management of the nuclear crisis.

Powerful bureaucrats retire to better-paid jobs in the very industries they once oversaw, in a practice known as "amakudari." Perhaps no sector had closer relations with regulators than the country’s utilities; regulators and the regulated worked hand in hand to promote nuclear energy, since both were keen to reduce Japan’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels.

Now hold on a second. They live in a country where there is a revolving door between corporations and the regulators who oversee their industries?

I'm glad the Times gives us the  Japanese word for this, since most U.S. readers have no frame of reference with which to comprehend such a bizarre practice.

If you've tracked media coverage of nuclear power, you know that every few months or so nuclear power is about to enjoy a comeback. The "nuclear renaissance" has always been right around the corner, we've often been told.

Take the New York Times, for example:

-Few industries have enjoyed the kind of renaissance that nuclear power may be poised to undergo.
(5/23/01)

-After decades in the doghouse because of environmental, safety and cost concerns, nuclear power is enjoying a renaissance of expectations.
(editorial, 5/29/01)

-Energy shortages may be creating talk of a nuclear power renaissance.
(6/28/01)

-"Much Talk of a Nuclear Renaissance, but So Far Little Action"
(headline, 3/3/06)

-The continuing fight over Indian Point comes as nuclear power is anticipating a renaissance, mainly because of the high price of natural gas.
(6/7/06)

-One day this May, on a brisk morning so clear that I could see its cooling towers from 20 miles away, I visited Vogtle on one leg of a tour to assess what many in the energy industry are calling a nuclear renaissance.
(7/16/06-- a piece with the subhead "A Nuclear Renaissance?")

-major step toward actual construction after several years of speculation about a nuclear renaissance.
(8/14/06)

-As the chief executive of Constellation Energy, a utility holding company in Baltimore that already operates five nuclear reactors, Mr. Shattuck is convinced that nuclear power is on the verge of a renaissance, ready to provide reliable electricity at a competitive price.
(8/22/06)

-NEW REACTORS ACROSS THE GLOBE: A Nuclear Power Renaissance
(headline, 1/16/07)

-The senior member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission warned on Monday that the failure of Congress to pass a detailed budget for the current fiscal year could damage the nuclear renaissance that the government tried so hard to encourage with the energy bill of 2005.
(1/23/07)

-''To bring about the nuclear renaissance in the United States, it really is going to take the global nuclear industry,'' said Michael J. Wallace, a Constellation executive who will be chairman of the new entity. ''Vendors, suppliers, operators and investors like E.D.F. who understand and are comfortable with the technology -- we need them all.''
(7/21/07)

-''A nuclear renaissance is now gearing up everywhere in the world,'' said John B. Ritch III , a former American diplomat and director general of the World Nuclear Association, an industry group. ''It is occurring parallel to an enormous expansion in energy consumption.''
(11/27/07)

-Gregory B. Jaczko, one of the federal agency's three commissioners, said it might not have enough staff members to do now what it did in the 1970s and '80s -- supervise the construction of a couple of dozen types of reactors. The commission has been hiring rapidly to prepare for a nuclear renaissance, but officials there were counting on standardization, if not quite mass production, as a way to manage the workload.
(12/5/07)

-the so-called nuclear renaissance is moving slowly.
(8/6/08)

-Worries about carbon dioxide and galloping demand for electricity might seem to be setting the stage for a renaissance of nuclear power.
(9/24/08)

-More than 90 percent of Areva is held by the French government, which also could inject more money into the company at a time when nuclear power could be on the verge of a renaissance.
(1/27/09)

-Today, concern about climate change and desire for ''energy independence'' have driven former skeptics to take another look at nuclear power. Some even talk of a ''nuclear renaissance.''
(book review, 3/8/09)

-The massive power plant under construction on muddy terrain on this Finnish island was supposed to be the showpiece of a nuclear renaissance.
(5/29/09)

-But the companies are concerned that the credit crisis has dealt a critical blow to nuclear power in the United States, which had been perceived as undergoing a renaissance starting in 2004.
(11/1/09)

-David M. Ratcliffe, the chairman and chief executive of the Southern Company, said that a nuclear renaissance was in the wings and that ''we will get on with that at a more rapid pace now that we've made this first step.''
(2/17/10)

-Clarence Fenner, the work force development coordinator for the South Texas Project, a Bay City councilman and a former first sergeant in the Army. ''This nuclear renaissance is important for our community, our state and our country. It's not just a job.''
(4/22/10)

-Is this the long-awaited renaissance of the nuclear construction business, after years of being moribund?
(4/22/10)

-Tomas Kaberger, director general of the Swedish Energy Agency, said there was no certainty that any of the plants would be built, despite talk of a nuclear renaissance.
(7/2/10)

-The project had once been hailed as a cornerstone of a nuclear power renaissance.
(10/10/10)

-Over the last decade, Kazakhstan rapidly became the world's largest uranium producer, overtaking Canada with vast increases in production. According to World Nuclear Association figures, Kazakh production jumped 62 percent from 2008 to 2009. Overall global demand remained steady, however, because the long-promised nuclear renaissance was always just over the horizon.
(11/17/10)

-In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed giving the nuclear construction business a type of help it has never had, a role in a quota for clean energy. But recent setbacks in a hoped-for ''nuclear renaissance'' raise questions about how much of a role nuclear power can play.
(2/11/11)

There was a lot of chatter about editor Tina Brown and the "new" Newsweek, which debuted last week. None of it struck me as all that interesting--a column up front from Leslie Gelb warning about the threat of Arab democracy and an anti-Social Security harangue from Robert Samuelson made it feel very much like the "old" Newsweek.

One other piece stood out, and only more so this week--a warm profile of the executive in charge of France's nuclear power company, Areva. The subhead was "France's Most Powerful Businesswoman Believes Now Is the Time for the Next Atomic Boom." And the piece led with this:

The Middle East is in turmoil, oil prices have skyrocketed, the cost of gas is through the roof. All of which is good news--if you’re Anne Lauvergeon.

While Newsweek notes that the "world may still need convincing" about nuclear power, the magazine doesn't seem to be so conflicted:

To understand how nuclear energy has morphed in the public consciousness from apocalyptic villain to "clean, green" renewable energy, look no further than Lauvergeon.

Puff pieces about Areva aren't anything new--60 Minutes had one in 2007 that we took apart here. It's hard to beat this one for bad timing, though.