11:26 AM

CJR on Fukushima

I'm writing this brief post from a National Science Foundation workshop on environmental, reproductive, and genomic justice, so things will be short.  But I wanted to call your attention to an excellent Columbia Journalism Review interview with the journalist who has been doing most of the reporting on the Fukushima incident for the New York Times.  His comments are revealing and, in my opinion, spot on.  Here's an excerpt:

If you want to get cold and analytical about it, we need electricity so we can have clean drinking water, sewage processing, fresh food in the refrigerator, sixty-eight degrees on a cold winter night, and seventy-two degrees on a hot August afternoon. All of those things have benefits, and all of them are going to have a cost somewhere. One of them is risk and sometimes death. Look at the people who died in San Bruno [California] when the natural gas pipeline there ruptured. These are the costs of extracting, converting, and delivering energy, but we don’t really look at it statistically. We don’t think in terms of deaths per megawatt hour. Nuclear power accidents are simply sexier than coal mine accidents.

Comment (1)

I really like this article a lot. This keeps my optimism up that there are people who are experts on different areas in the media when it comes to science. I had to agree with everything that he said well. He has definitely maintained a level head about the situation and I will agree with you in saying that his opinions are spot on! Phew, I feel so much better!