Nuclear Power

When Marty Jezer got a letter and survey in the mail from "Citizens Against the Shutdown of Vermont Yankee," he guessed right away that the group was a front for his local nuclear power plant. "Vermont Yankee has always presented its side of the nuclear story with vigor," he says. "They have a public relations staff trained to do that job. So why the front group? Why the transparently ridiculous attempt to show grassroots support?"

After the Taliban fled Kabul, BBC reporter John Simpson inspected an abandoned building where he claimed to find instructions for assembling a nuclear weapon. Actually, the document he filmed was a 1979 spoof from the Journal of Irreproducible Results, which publishes humorous parodies of scientific writing. If terrorists used this document to build a weapon, they're in worse trouble than they realize.

In Toxic Sludge Is Good For You we wrote about the "Nevada Initiative," a PR campaign that hired prominent Nevadans to endorse plans to store high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Now former Nevada Gov. Robert List has been hired by the Nuclear Energy Institute, making him the highest ranking former official in the state to align with the nuclear power industry.

The Nevada State Legislature allocated $4 million for PR and legal fees to stop the creation of a nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain. PR Week quotes an unnamed Washington public affairs executive predicting that the PR contract would attract an unusual selection of bidders, because any company with nuclear interests would support the creation of the Yucca Mountain site, and most large PR agencies are likely to have clients that would be in direct or in indirect conflict with the state's campaign. "The pro-nuke side is much more lucrative," said the executive.