Food for Thought: Belgian Publisher Says Nuclear Industry Should Engage Public on a More Emotional Level

From WNA's World Nuclear News:

A nuclear plant as the setting for a new hit TV series? Popular entertainment media could prove to be more effective at engaging public support and acceptance for nuclear energy than past industry attempts to convince the world of nuclear's merits.

In a special presentation to the World Nuclear Association's 34th Annual Symposium, Belgian publisher and former nuclear engineer Alain Michel exhorted the nuclear industry to make more efforts to engage public support on an emotional level - and popular entertainment media would be the perfect platform to achieve this.

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After ten years of research on how public opinion of nuclear activities is affected by emotional influences such as television, film or books, Michel is convinced that nuclear communication should be more emotive. Pointing to the success of popular television series on a worldwide scale in raising the profile of certain professions - the CSI franchise and forensic medicine being but one example - Michel suggests that nuclear activities as the backdrop for a television series could simply help nuclear energy to become more familiar to everyone, not just those who happen to live near a nuclear power plant. The role of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors could be the potential subject for such a series, posits Michel...

He may be on to something. It could be entertaining yet informative to see a show where bad guys try to take over a nuclear plant and the plant's security team takes them down. Or maybe to see a show about the emotional public hearings on licensing new plants and re-licensing existing plants. Or maybe to see how nuclear plant operators react when an intense situation like an earthquake or a hurricane hits...