Monday Morning Crisis Quarterback

The headlines coming out of Japan today are alarming.  "Authorities scramble to avert meltdown." "Fukushima second worst nuclear accident in history." "Meltdown probably underway at Fukushima." Are you scared
now? How about, "Radioactive releases in Japan could last months?" Obviously, things are bad. How bad? Well, you know, bad. If that seems inarticulate, consider this. As I write this, authorities around the world are bickering about whether the accident at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan is a level 4 or level 5 incident. Oh my goodness. Level 5.

The very fact that we can't articulate any relative level of "badness" may give you some insight into just how hard it is to have decent crisis communications in this situation and, frankly, how unhelpful the media reporting has tended to be. What's a level 4? What's a level 5? What does it mean to the people near the plant? What does it mean to me?

Why is it so hard to get good, straightforward information from the media about this accident? I think there are three major reasons: sensationalism, science and subconscious.

For starters, these headlines are sensationalistic. Sensationalism sells papers and gets web hits. They want to draw you in, and it works, so they keep doing it. It's hard to summarize the scientific nuances of the situation in five catchy words.

This brings us to science. The science here is way beyond what the average American truly understands. Summarizing it quickly for the purposes of crisis communication is pretty nearly impossible. This is especially true because we want the people who really understand this stuff to be working on containing the accident, not explaining it to us.

This leaves us to fend for ourselves, and we have a problem. Our subconscious (ok, that's a stretch, but I needed an "s" word for the alliteration) does not like the notion of a nuclear accident. Those of us of a certain age were reared on the notion that the United States and the USSR were going to blow each other to nuclear smithereens, and that we would all die from radiation poisoning if we survived the initial blast. When we we hear "explosion" and "nuclear" and "radiation," the memory of those lessons is stored in the particular file drawer in our minds which gets opened. It gets worse, because when we hear "nuclear," "explosion" and "Japan," our associations are with horrific images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But let's try to put the hysteria to the side for one moment and figure out what those of us who are not nuclear physicists can actually figure out. Thus far, this is a level 4 or 5 accident. These levels come from the International Nuclear Events Scale, which goes from 0 to 7. A 0 means it has no detectable implications. A 7 is Chernobyl, the only 7 ever to happen. A 4 is a local impact event, and a 5 is an accident with wider consequences. By way of comparison, the Three Mile Island accident was a 5. That probably doesn't help a whole lot, but it's a start.

If you'd like a really good look at why we are so bad at understanding the risk here and why the notion of it going on for a long time is so distressing, I strongly recommend a post over at the blog of the University of Michigan Risk Science Center. The fact that the author has the same last name as me is purely coincidental. I'm sure there are many, many people with the last name "Zikmund-Fisher." Well, actually, just four. This one happens to be married to me, but that's not why I'm recommending it -- it's really good.

There was a tiny radiation leak at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania yesterday afternoon.  The worker with the highest radiation exposure from the incident got the equivalent of about two and a quarter chest x-rays' worth.  Nobody else got any.  Workers were sent home until the building where the leak occurred could be cleaned.  No radiation escaped the building.

By any rational standard, this is not a very exciting news story.  I tried to dig up some statistics on minor nuclear accidents and was unsuccessful (mostly because people only write about major accidents).  However, I was able to discover that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has as many as 6 reports of incidents involving misuse, mishandling or release of radioactive materials on its website every day.  This undoubtedly was on the more serious end of those, but it's not at all unheard of.  And yet, it's all over the news.

The only reason this story is a story at all is because it happened at Three Mile Island.  The name "Three Mile Island" has come to be synonymous with "major nuclear disaster."  In 1979, Unit 2 at Three Mile Island experienced a partial meltdown.  It is still the biggest civil nuclear disaster ever in the United States, and the second biggest one in the world (behind the Chernobyl disaster).  If you  lived in Pennsylvania in 1979, you certainly remember that incident.  I was nine years old at the time, living in Massachusetts, and I have a vivid memory of my parents buying powdered milk in case the dairy cows on the East coast all suffered radiation contamination.

Three Mile Island is so synonymous with nuclear disaster and so ubiquitous in the American consciousness that the coverage of yesterday's leak uniformly adheres to the following pattern:  The leak yesterday is explained.  the issue of whether there was or is danger to the public is explored.  The accident in 1979 is mentioned with absolutely no segue or connection.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that people are drawing a connection, and so it behooves the press to make that connection, too.  What I find astounding is that there is literally no effort to contrast the seriousness of the 1979 incident with the situation this weekend.  All that would be necessary would be a connecting sentence like,

This incident reminded many local residents of the much more serious accident in 1979,

or,

Official desciptions of this event made it clear it was not nearly as serious as the famous 1979 incident at the same facility.

It may make sense for us to have the memories of those scary days 30 years ago triggered by the news today.  It may even make sense for the media to talk about that connection.  Part of dealing with people's stress reactions, however, is to put their fears in some context.  The media is utterly failing to do that.

Oh, and by the way, how many people do you think died during the incident in 1979?  And how many lives do you believe were shortened by the radiation exposure?  The answer may surprise you -- it certainly surprised me.  No one died at Three Mile Island (then or now), and official estimates are that perhaps one single solitary person may live a shorter life because of the accident.  Perspective is an interesting thing.