The Campaign to Sell Nuclear

Abstract

The current effort to rebrand nuclear as green is only the latest in a series of PR efforts to convince the U.S. public that fission is the ticket to a clean, efficient, and safe energy future.

High energy prices. Concern about global warming. Increased awareness of the environmental and health impacts of coal. Nuclear power is enjoying its most favorable messaging environment in decades. This convergence has not escaped the notice of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the main U.S. industry group.

In 2006, NEI launched a multi-year, multimillion dollar campaign to increase public and policy-maker “support for nuclear energy broadly and specifically for the Yucca Mountain project,” the designated but long-stalled national repository for nuclear waste, located in southern Nevada. 1 Under the direction of PR consultant Hill and Knowlton and polling and market research firm Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, NEI has sought to position nuclear power as an environmentally friendly electricity source. Their slogan “Nuclear: Clean Air Energy”–often accompanied by pictures of playful children or happy families–has appeared on everything from magazine and television ads to bookmarks and luggage tags to race cars. Nuclear companies distribute similar materials, such as UniStar Nuclear Energy's “Know New Nukes: Clean, Safe, Reliable” bumper stickers and Exelon Nuclear's green tote bags, which promise “a greener tomorrow through today's innovation.”

The most visible–and controversial–aspect of NEI's ongoing campaign is the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition (CASEnergy). The group was launched in April 2006 and describes itself as “a grassroots coalition” that “support[s] nuclear energy.” 2 CASEnergy–and its famous co-chairs, former Greenpeace activist Patrick Moore and former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman–have garnered significant media attention through op-ed columns, white papers, and events held across the country. Rarely do Moore, Whitman, or the reporters interviewing or quoting them mention that CASEnergy was founded and is funded by NEI, or that Moore and Whitman are paid NEI consultants. 3

A Columbia Journalism Review July/August 2006 editorial headlined “False Fronts: Why to Look Behind the Label,” lamented, “Part of [NEI's] thinking, surely, was that the press would peg [Moore and Whitman] as dedicated environmentalists who have turned into pro-nuke cheerleaders, rather than as paid spokespeople…. We have no position on nuclear power. We just find it maddening that Hill and Knowlton, which has an $8-million account with the nuclear industry, should have such an easy time working the press.”

Yet CASEnergy is merely the tip of the iceberg. Local groups such as the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance and the New Jersey Affordable, Clean, Reliable Energy Coalition (funded by Entergy and Exelon, respectively) have appeared on the scene advocating for both building new nuclear plants and extending the operating licenses of existing ones. As NEI's J. Scott Peterson, vice president of communications, explained, “We now have a fewer number of companies operating most of the nuclear plants, and so nuclear power for those companies is a core business…. They have to be much more aggressive in communicating about nuclear energy.” 4

The effort to “green” nuclear power's public image has been so successful that NEI is moving on to new talking points. “When we originally started doing work for you, the two challenges that you had public opinion-wise were people had concerns about whether nuclear power plants were safe and whether they were clean,” said Craig Smith, a Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates pollster, at NEI's May 2008 conference in Chicago. Now, he says, “you are winning two to one,” on both points. Future messaging, he told the assembled industry representatives, will focus on the jobs created by building new nuclear plants and on reprocessing the spent fuel from nuclear reactors. “You still have a challenge of what to do with used fuel,” warned Smith. 5

While the recent pro-nuclear push has been noted by journalists and condemned by environmentalists, the promotion of nuclear power as clean, green, and safe is not new. NEI designed its current crop of “clean air” print ads back in 2000. In 1998 and 1999, NEI ran ads in national newspapers and magazines that called nuclear energy an “environmentally clean” power source that produces electricity “without polluting the air and water.” (The Better Business Bureau ruled that NEI's ads made “overly broad claims that tell, at best, only a half-truth, and therefore have the capacity to deceive.” 6 The Federal Trade Commission agreed, but declined to ban them.) 7 As early as 1992, ads from an NEI predecessor organization stated, “Nuclear plants don't pollute the air…. Nuclear plants produce no greenhouse gases.” 8

Indeed, since its inception, the nuclear power industry–along with the government agencies supporting it–has carefully courted public opinion. In the 1950s, the main concern was dissociating nuclear power from atomic weapons. Hence President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1953 “Atoms for Peace” speech to the United Nations, in which he heralded the advent of “peaceful power from atomic energy.” 9 The following year, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chair Lewis Strauss boasted at a National Association of Science Writers meeting that nuclear power would not only become “too cheap to meter,” it would also usher in “an age of peace.” 10

AEC worked with an early industry group, the Atomic Industrial Forum, to produce and distribute films and pamphlets promoting nuclear power. The films–with titles such as Power and Promise, Atomic Venture, and The New Power–documented the construction and operation of the first nuclear plants, emphasizing the triumph of science and the benefits to society. AEC also sought to reassure the public. Its 1966 film Atomic Power Today: Service with Safety described a nuclear plant as “an unsinkable ship” with “a life preserver around it.” Throughout the 1960s, nearly 200 million people saw AEC films in theaters or on television. 11

The safety message became more prominent in the 1970s. In 1972, AEC recruited MIT professor Norman Rasmussen to head its reactor safety study. Though a physicist, Rasmussen had little experience with reactor safety issues. He had, however, proved himself an ardent supporter of nuclear power. He advised Reddy Communications, a PR firm that specialized in teaching “how to debate the critics of nuclear power,” and Americans for Energy Independence, a pro-nuclear lobby group organized and funded by Westinghouse. When the safety study was released in 1974, AEC provided a short video to television stations across the country, for use in their news programs. The video featured Rasmussen, “sitting outside the Student Union at MIT, as he was interviewed by an AEC official; it left the strong impression that the AEC was just learning the results of a study that had been done at MIT.” In reality, AEC had carried out the study, under constraints designed to maximize its PR worth. 12

The March 1979 partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island occurred just days after the release of The China Syndrome, a horror film about safety problems at a fictional nuclear plant, and put nuclear power proponents on the defensive. More than a decade later, consultants seeking to justify a multimillion dollar budget to promote the waste repository at Yucca Mountain complained, “Countering the amount of free press against nuclear, such as accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, hazardous leaks and various other plant problems, along with science fiction movies, would literally cost tens of millions of dollars in terms of column inches and air time in Nevada alone.” 13

Consultants complained, “Countering the amount of free press against nuclear, such as accidents at Three Mile island and Chernobyl, hazardous leaks and various other plant problems, along with science fiction movies, would literally cost tens of millions of dollars in terms of column inches and air time in nevada alone.”

As early as July 1979, proponents began attempting to reclaim Three Mile Island. That's when Metropolitan Edison, which ran TMI, began showing a 15-minute film about the accident to visitors. The film was produced in consultation with Hill and Knowlton. 14 By 1985, a TMI spokesperson lauded the nuclear plant's shift to tourist destination and communications hub, saying it had made significant progress toward “clearing up the credibility collapse that occurred immediately following the accident, demystifying the place in the eyes of the public.” The plant's PR department–then 36 people strong with a $2 million annual budget–held special tours for local officials, sent speakers to schools and civic groups, and even scored a multipage spread in the AAA travel guidebook for Pennsylvania. 15

Nuclear Energy Women (NEW), a group formed in 1975 by the Atomic Industrial Forum (an NEI precursor organization) and headquartered in its Maryland office, helped with post-TMI damage control. 16 On October 18, 1979, NEW organized “Nuclear Energy Education Day,” which featured pro-nuclear talks, plant tours, and other small-scale events across the country. 17 NEW chair Ruth Faulkner said the goal was to educate “the public about the need for nuclear energy.” She added, “The energy made possible by nuclear power is especially important for women. The use of electricity in the home has been one of the principal factors in liberating [them]…. And in the job market … women have had the opportunity to succeed because of the economy and the jobs made possible by abundant energy.” 18

NEW's outreach targets included everyone from schoolgirls to housewives to businesswomen. They helped Girl Scouts trying to earn energy and technology badges, gave their Outstanding Woman in Energy Award to nuclear industry professionals, and distributed their booklet (Working with the Atom: Careers for You) in schools, libraries, and YWCAs. In 1983, NEW members “served irradiated shrimp and mushrooms at a food editors' conference … to quell consumers' radiation worries.” NEW's widely used slideshow, “Women and Energy: The Vital Link,” warned, “If there is a shortage, energy for labor-saving devices will be the first cutback…. Have you ever tried to wash things by slamming them against a flat rock?” 19

For more professional audiences, NEW offered informational booklets, programs, and special tours, instead of their slide-show. In October 1982, NEW organized a tour of the Nevada Test Site and Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a decommissioned nuclear power and weapons production site in Washington State, for a group of women business, academic, and community leaders. NEW's Renae Cook reported that going into the Nevada site's Climax Mine “and actually standing on the waste was most impressive.” Cook told a nuclear trade publication that “in comparison” with the former weapons sites, “a few fuel assemblies for nuclear power plants seem much more manageable.” 20

In addition to being perhaps the longest-lived effort to persuade women to support nuclear energy, NEW demonstrated the importance of groups that appear to be separate from the nuclear industry (a dynamic that CASEnergy is currently benefiting from). One NEW member who worked in the public relations department of a utility company found that “when she spoke as a utility company, her ‘credibility was next to zero’–audiences were hostile and media coverage was critical. However, when she spoke as a representative of NEW, she usually received sympathetic press coverage and her audiences were more open to her pro-nuclear arguments.” 21

NEW wasn't the first attempt to increase women's support for nuclear energy. In 1966, AEC released a short film, The Atom and Eve. As described by environmental studies professor Lin Nelson, the film showed Eve “adorned in a flowing aqua dress,” enjoying “a world charged with electricity and rich with all the wonders of a dream house…. This boundless female-driven taste for convenience and energy will … be sated by ‘The Atom,’ which is seen pulsating center stage while Eve prances about it in a show of flirtatious and servile gratitude.” 22

The nuclear industry's outreach to women continued after NEW's dissolution in the mid-1980s. The U.S. Council for Energy Awareness (USCEA)–yet another of NEI's predecessors–developed a special marketing plan for 1992, widely touted as the “year of the woman.” That year, USCEA television ads featured a young woman engineer who admitted, “When I was in college, I was against nuclear energy. But I've reached a different conclusion. [Nuclear energy] means cleaner air for the planet,” and “I want my kids to grow up in a healthy environment.” USCEA ran similarly themed print ads in Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, and Better Homes and Gardens. 23 In 1999, NEI founded the group U.S. Women in Nuclear. 24 In May 2008, pollster Craig Smith identified women, along with people of color, youth, and environmentalists, as those who “need some additional convincing” about the benefits of nuclear power. 25

Perhaps the only demographic that's received as much attention from nuclear power proponents as women are residents of Nevada. The 1987 designation of Yucca Mountain as the proposed national repository for nuclear waste set off a political and public relations feud that continues today. In 1991, the American Nuclear Energy Council (ANEC), yet another NEI predecessor, launched a $9 million PR and advertising campaign to “neutralize” opposition to the Yucca repository. 26

ANEC commissioned local political consultants to design its “Nevada Initiative.” The campaign relied on extensive advertising to “provide ‘air cover’ for elected officials who wish to discuss benefits.” The ads “will stress safety,” until enough Nevadans have been reassured, and then “the merits of nuclear energy” will be highlighted, stated the campaign plan. 27 Among the first wave of television ads was one that showed a train colliding with a nuclear waste cask, to make the point that the containers would not break in case of an accident. But, shortly after the ads began airing, ANEC's campaign plan was leaked to the public. Nevadans reacted with outrage and then ridicule. One local restaurant began promoting its salad bar with ads that showed tomatoes surviving train collisions. 28

Though its Yucca campaign was ineffective–opposition to the repository actually increased–ANEC's general strategy is still being followed. The group planned its main push for 1993, a non-election year in Nevada. Not only would politicians be more easily persuaded when they weren't on the campaign trail, reasoned ANEC, but they would be more easily won over because “the Nevada legislature [faced] a projected state deficit” that year. 29 NEI pursued a similar tack in June 2008. In response to news that Nevada faces a budget shortfall of almost $1 billion, NEI offered the state access to the federal nuclear waste fund–if it dropped all objections to nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain. The governor rejected NEI's offer. 30

Indeed, the most striking thing about campaigns to promote nuclear energy is how little the tactics and messages have changed over the decades. If you look past the more dated aspects–Atom and his dancing housewife Eve, for example–what appears over and over again is the promise of a cleaner, easier, and brighter future, alongside pictures of happy women, children, and families. The problem is that this approach seeks to sway public opinion based on emotional appeals. That's fine for selling soda, but national energy policy should be determined by independently verified facts, rigorous analyses, and careful comparisons.