I’m writing this post in light of the recent disaster and its aftermath in Japan. Plus, the issue combines several subjects of my personal interest: energy technology, science, and psychology.
Before going on, let me state that this post isn’t about my opinion on the matter of expanding nuclear power. Rather, it’s about the public perception of nuclear power.
(For the record, I am Goldilocks on the future of nuclear. Not too cold: we need a carbon-free source of electricity until renewable energy reaches baseload scale, and nuclear power is a better option than devastating climate change. Not too hot: nuclear is expensive and waste disposal is an unsolved problem. But that’s the subject of another post.)
I initially started pondering this subject when I noticed that, day in and day out, I was finding far more U.S. news stories about the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant than about the tens of thousands of citizens who were killed or displaced by the tsunami. Although disappointed, I was not surprised that the media had seemingly misdirected its attention. (This is the same media that brought you Balloon Boy, after all.)
The issue gained a name when I read Andrew Revkin’s post on the Times DotEarth blog, “The ‘Dread to Risk’ Ratio on Radiation and Other Discontents.” Of the many links in his post, check out at least these three: Humans ‘Wired’ for Terror Over Remote Radiation Threats (Greenwire), Reflections on Fukushima: A time to mourn, to learn, and to teach (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists), and a Radiation Dose Chart infographic (from the artist behind XKCD).
These articles explain the issue quite coherently, so I won’t rewrite them here. The summary is this: humans instinctively fear certain types of risks, including things they don’t understand (e.g., nuclear power), and humans do poorly at assessing the relative risk of different threats (e.g., driving a car vs. nuclear power).
What do you think is the relative risk of coal versus nuclear? Here’s a visual answer. Seth Godin created this image comparing the death rate per watt produced from nuclear, oil, and coal from these statistics:
(Godin attributed this discrepancy in risk assessment to successful coal industry marketing, which if true, could explain why the risk of coal is underestimated, but he does not directly address the overestimated risk of nuclear.)
What I am particularly interested in are the lessons that can be learned from this event and society’s reaction to it. I believe these lessons have relevancy to science and technology issues far beyond nuclear power, including potentially to my own career when I launch a startup technology in the future.
Here are a few takeaways from me.
- People will inherently be afraid of technologies that they don’t understand (for another example, see the recent smart meter hubbub with PG&E)
- The public needs exposure directly to scientists communicating the facts, for accuracy and believability, but only recently have scientists started to accept they have a role in communicating directly with the public
- The public will mistrust authority when that authority has wronged them in the past. In this case, the secretive history of nuclear testing has clouded the future reputation of the technology.
Can public perception of risk be managed? What other technologies are being held back by a similar situation?
