In the last week discovery by the Dept. of Energy – and an immediate outcry from Washington Governore Jay Inslee – that several tanks of radioactive sludge at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington Statehave slow but significant leaks stirred up a brief news alarm squall in the region. This is of course a recurring sort of story. The old tank farm holding leftovers from bomb production early in the Cold War is well-past its intended lifetime. It has a history of leaks and is the focus of the costliest nuclear clean-up in US history. Environmental watchdogs and the public in general do not like to hear its subsurface plume might contaminate, however slightly and damn the dilution, groundwater wells and the bordering Columbia River.
Over the weekend, frequent Forbes.com columnist James Conca angrily went off on press coverage of the event. His lede's opening: "In a journalistic drone strike gone horribly wrong….". Conca is a genuine geochemist and nulcear waste storage authority with a resume thick with important federal jobs in that arena. His issue is not whether the leaks are a matter for serious concern. They are, he writes. His problem is the picture that ran with some of the coverage that ticks him off. It's not the one pasted into this post up top, lifted from an AP account in the New York Daily News, showing a decommissioned reactor. That is misleading enough, as no reactor site is the focus of rad-weak worries at Hanford. Worse, asserts Conca, many news outlets ran a photo of the operating Columbia Generating Station that leases its acreage from Hanford, but has nothing to do historically or otherwise with the medium-grade waste stored in Hanford's underground tank farms miles away.
In many ways, Conca seems like my kind of guy – technically savvy and good with words. His general opinion, better informed but paralleling my own, is that radiatiion is dangerous but the public, media, elected officials, and environmental organizations fritter away too much time (and public money) on minor nuclear leaks – see this recent column for illustration.
However, this one on Hanford may take things too far. The column's tone tars the media too broadly. Was coverage really a journalistic drone strike gone horribly wrong, or a minor if ignorant error by a few outlets with little impact on public perception or reaction to word that another small chapter in Hanford radioactive plume news has been added? He writes that the error is to be found in "everyone" meaning media "from "the New York Daily News to TV stations in Portland." First, as news style guides say, that's a false range. What's between the two ends that means anything. Every newspaper and TV station from New York to Oregon. Did anybody else use the improper picture? Conca in his other collumns accuses media, politicians, environmental watchdogs, and others of tarring all radiation with the same canard of a brush, that it's all deadly. Yet here he comes close to raising this one small example of dumb photo selection to rant at length about all media.
To his credit, he cites one outlet's coverage as highly competent. A small local paper has a writer on the topic who knows what she is talking about. She is a member of a vanishing breed, the newspaper beat writer (or broadcast reporter) who has seen enough news on a topic to get the next dollop in perspective:
- Mid-Columbia Tri-City Herald – Annette Cary: Governor Inslee: Six Hanford tanks are leaking ; Detail, history, context, and perspective all here in good measure. We lean the numbers on the tanks and everything – and that the two tanks that may have leaked as much as 300 gallons (about enough for a modest hut tub) per year have tens to hundreds of thousands of gallons of the goop left in them. That is, these are slow leaks. And no excess radiation near them is today apparent.
Also to his credit, Conca rouses interest in coverage of this issue. Some that the tracker could find do fall toward the nitwit, or perhaps just inexperienced, end of the spectrum in news judgment. As for instance, this one…
- KXLY (Spokane ABC outlet) Annie Bishop: Alarming leak announced at Hanford Nuclear Reservation ; Video broadcast does include, for no stated reason, footage of the civilian nuclear reactor. The reporter's written story consults nobody who is an expert on low level radiation issues. But we do hear from a rep of a Seattle activist group that has been on Hanford's case for decades and who calls the disclosure shocking, a huge crisis. 300 gallons per year is nothing to ignore but it is no huge crisis. A million gallons already, they say, leaked in the last 50 years or so.
Other stories fall in the vast middle ground of a bit skimpy perhaps, but competent.
- AP – Shannon Dininny: Leaking tanks are Hanford nuke site's latest woe ;
- Reuters – Eric Johnson: Radioactive waste leaking from six tanks at Washington state nuclear site ;
- Seattle Times – Craig Welch: 6 nuclear-waste tanks leaking at Hanford ; Nice job, pointing out the contents are both chemically nothing to spill on oneself ('caustic' Welch writes) but radioactive. Welch says they are dribbling, and no immediate health threat and years away, at least, from reaching any public water supplies.
- Forbes – Jeff McMahon: What's Inside The Leaking Tanks at Hanford ; One cannot tell if this story was conceieved in concert with Conca's, but it is highly detailed and revealing. One useful factual assertion is that, despite some press assertions that the leaks involve highly radioactive material, it does not qualify as high-level waste.
- Bloomberg – Alison Vekshin: Six Nuclear Waste Tanks Leaking at Washington State Site ;
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