Doublespeak: Nuclear Power Plants :: essays research papers

Doublespeak Nuclear Power PlantsHarrisburg, Pennsylvania is the home of a large, efficient, andthreatening nuclear baron prove, Three Mile Island. Nuclear force out plants havethe awesome ability to create large amounts of power with really little fuel, yetthey carry the frightening reality of a meltdown with very little warning.Suppose you live in Harrisburg and you hither that the nearby nuclear plant had apartial meltdown, how would you react? When close people here the word meltdown,they automatically think radiation, cancer, and death. Now recollect your livingin Harrisburg and you here the nearby power plant experienced a "normalaberration", you would probably react differently.      thus far with the highly proven safety of nuclear power, there is still chargefrom citizens and the chance of an accident. The nuclear power industry usesmisleading language, and words understood by nuclear employees only, oreuphemisms and jargon, to mislead th e exoteric and make them recall that there isnothing to be afraid of and that there is no misfortune of a major accident.They take the publics biggest fears, meltdowns and contaminations, and makethem into " government issues" and "infiltrations." This use of doublespeak is misleading tothe public and may make them believe that a major accident hasnt happened, orthe accident was a normal event or minor incident.     In 1979 a valve in the Three Mile Island stuck open, allowing coolant,an important part of the plant, to neglect from the reactor. An installedemergency remains did its job and supplied the reactor with necessary coolant, merely the system was shot off for a few hours due to employee error. Corrective follow up was eventually taken, and only a partial meltdown occurred. The plantscontainment building was sufficient to hold most of the radioactive products fromentering the local environment. Only a small amount of activity escaped , thatactivity was carried by coolant water that had overflowed into an supplementbuilding and then to the environment. Though the event didnt pose any organicharm to citizens, this one billion dollar incident wasnt an everyday event ornormal occurrence, as the industrys doublespeak makes you believe.     In 1986 a similar but more serious event occurred in the USSR. A nuclearpower plant at Chernobyl exploded and burned. The explosion was caused by anunauthorized interrogation of the reactor by its operators. Radiation spread rapidlyforcing 135,000 evacuations within a 1000 mile radius, and more then 30