Doublespeak: Nuclear Power Plants :: essays research papers

Doublespeak Nuclear Power PlantsHarrisburg, Pennsylvania is the home of a large, efficient, andthreatening atomic power plant, Three Mile Island. Nuclear power plants havethe awed ability to create large amounts of power with very little fuel, yetthey carry the frightening reality of a meltdown with very little warning. see you live in Harrisburg and you here that the nearby nuclear plant had apartial meltdown, how would you react? When most people here the word meltdown,they automatically think radiation, cancer, and death. Now suppose your livingin Harrisburg and you here the nearby power plant experienced a "normalaberration", you would in all likelihood react differently.     Even with the highly proven safety of nuclear power, there is still fearfrom citizens and the chance of an calamity. The nuclear power industry usesmisleading language, and wrangle understood by nuclear employees only, oreuphemisms and jargon, to mislead the public and make them believe that there isnothing to be afraid of and that there is no porta of a major accident.They take the publics biggest fears, meltdowns and contaminations, and makethem into "events" and "infiltrations." This use of doublespeak is misleading tothe public and may make them believe that a major accident hasnt happened, orthe accident was a normal event or minor consequent.     In 1979 a valve in the Three Mile Island stuck open, allowing coolant,an important part of the plant, to escape from the reactor. An installedemergency carcass did its job and supplied the reactor with necessary coolant,but the system was shot off for a few hours due to employee error. Correctiveaction was eventually taken, and only a partial meltdown occurred. The plantscontainment building was able to hold most of the radioactive products fromentering the local environment. Only a small amount of performance escaped, thatactivity was carried by coolant water that had overflowed into an auxiliarybuilding and then to the environment. Though the event didnt pose any extremeharm to citizens, this one billion dollar incident wasnt an everyday event ornormal occurrence, as the industrys doublespeak makes you believe.     In 1986 a similar but more serious event occurred in the USSR. A nuclearpower plant at Chernobyl exploded and burned. The explosion was caused by anunauthorized testing of the reactor by its operators. Radiation spread rapidlyforcing 135,000 evacuations within a 1000 mile radius, and more then 30