We see it all the time here at NEI Nuclear Notes. But what we've never seen before is the same article, almost word for word, being recycled for audiences in the hopes that nobody notices what's really going on.
Case in point: Susan Sachs at the Christian Science Monitor. Back in July, the newspaper ran the following story with a European dateline:
Summer is exposing the chinks in Europe's nuclear power networks.I'm sure plenty of our readers remember the story, as my colleague Lisa Stiles-Shell debunked a few days after it appeared. For another take, click here.
The extended heat wave in July aggravated drought conditions across much of Europe, lowering water levels in the lakes and rivers that many nuclear plants depend on to cool their reactors.
As a result, utility companies in France, Spain, and Germany were forced to take some plants offline and reduce operations at others. Across Western Europe, nuclear plants also had to secure exemptions from regulations in order to discharge overheated water into the environment.
But I guess once wasn't enough for Sachs and the Monitor, because at the end of last week, the following ran on the paper's newswire around the world:
Summer exposed the chinks in Europe's nuclear power networks.I know it isn't plagiarism if you're plagiarising your own work, but this is ridiculous. Does the paper actually think that because they changed verb tenses in the first paragraph that this isn't simply a 100% cut and paste job? Again, here's Sachs from the Monitor on August 10:
The extended heat wave in July aggravated drought conditions across much of Europe, lowering water levels in the lakes and rivers that many nuclear plants depend on to cool their reactors.
As a result, utility companies in France, Spain and Germany were forced to take some plants offline and reduce operations at others.
Across Western Europe, nuclear plants also had to secure exemptions from regulations in order to discharge overheated water into the environment.
The troubles of the nuclear industry did not end there. Sweden shut four of its 10 nuclear reactors after a short-circuit cut power at one plant on July 26, raising fears of a dangerous design flaw. One week later, Czech utility officials shut down one of the country's six nuclear reactors because of what they described as a serious mechanical problem that led to the leak of radioactive water.And now again, from November 11:
The troubles of the nuclear industry did not end there. Sweden shut four of its 10 nuclear reactors after a short- circuit cut power at one plant on July 26, raising fears of a dangerous design flaw. One week later, Czech utility officials shut down one of the country's six nuclear reactors because of what they described as a serious mechanical problem that led to the leak of radioactive water.I guess I could go through both pieces paragraph by paragraph, but that would be a waste of time. Just go take a look yourself and gaze in awe at the Monitor's nervy performance.
The next question we need to ask is why this happened. Are the editors at the paper so arrogant that they think their readers wouldn't notice? Or were they disappointed that their incomplete story, one without a rejoinder from the nuclear industry, didn't get as much attention as they would have hoped in a late-Summer news cycle?
Even better, since the Monitor likes to recycle old news, we're going to recycle some of our own: A report from a Department of Energy engineer who found that California's wind turbines failed miserably during the state's Summer heat wave.
I wonder why the Monitor failed to pick up on that news? Then again, some questions answer themselves, don't they?
UPDATE: Over at NEI's media relations desk, my colleague Steve Kerekes passed the following along to me:
Just spoke w/ an editor from CSM's int'l desk; this is a case of an outlet (I don't know which, sorry, unless and until Scott Peters can find what triggered the Google pull) publishing the old article.Thanks to Steve for the followup (Scott Peters handles our news clips). That would mean that the Hamilton Spectator, the paper that picked up the piece, was responsible for editing in the time shift. Why in the world would anybody pick up a story off the wire that was 3 months old?
CSM did not re-issue the Aug. 10 piece.
TUESDAY UPDATE: The Hamilton Spectator has removed the above referenced article from its Web site. Nothing to see here...
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Energy, Technology, Electricity, Environment, Susan Sachs, Christian Science Monitor
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