"What We Have Here is Failure to Communicate"

I have been thinking about what I said in an early post about the politics of nuclear power.  I have to question whether my statement about the debate over nuclear power being purely political actually holds water.  There are many out there who believe that there are too many different interests out there and that the debate cannot be settled by the spitting out of facts about nuclear power.  In other words, communication isn't believed to be able to settle the debate.  This is what I was conveying in my earlier post, but upon thinking and talking about it further, I think I disagree with what I said.

I was up visiting a good friend of mine last weekend who happens to be very wise in the ways of communicating.  He had some basic ideas about good communication that I found very interesting.  The first of which was so obvious that you never even think about it.  I mean who thinks that an act of communication is only an act of communication if it results in an understanding of the message being sent.  Such a simple idea that carries so much power, but yet we don't think about it like that.  We are only communicating when we are creating an understanding.

Unfortunately I cannot say that the communication around the nuclear power industry has ever resulted in an understanding to those around.  I mean, facts are facts and what I have been trying to get across on this blog is in general the facts of the situation.  We can't argue about the amount of physical waste that has been produced by U.S. nuclear power plants.  It is just a physical fact.  We can't argue about the amount of uranium we know exists on the Earth.  It is just fact.  We can't argue about the safety record that nuclear power has had for the last 25 years.  It is just fact.  There are many things that are just fact that can't seem to be understood.

I don't think that this says that it is not fact.  It really can't say that these things aren't facts because again, facts are facts.  What is causing this lack of understanding?  Well, there are other factors that play into communication as well.  These are such things as amiability to what is being communicated.  This plays with the special interests and political side of nuclear power.  How much can you like nuclear power if it is the only real competition to the product that you are supplying.  This is the case of the coal industry.  This does not take away from the truth of the facts about nuclear power though.

So it is not politics that causing the debate to continue.  I think that we institute more nuclear power before we have a real necessity for it.  At least, I hope that nuclear power can grow before this happens just for the sake of our economy.  I think that the problem has just been that the nuclear power industry has never really communicated well about what nuclear power is.  How do I know this?  There is a lack of understanding out there about nuclear power!  This just tells us that there is no communication, though it might not have been for the lack of trying. 

The deficit model is not working as far as achieving understanding.  It is not communicating the issue.  Thus, I think that the nuclear power industry needs to find a way to communicate to the public its true power.  I don't have a solution for how this should be done at the moment, but all I am trying to say is that the argument is not purely politics.  The argument is due to a lack of understanding.  The facts are simply not know.  There is a right and a wrong answer, yet nobody knows how to tell which is right and which is wrong.  I feel confident that I know the right answer because I have studied a lot about the issue.  I have a good understanding about the safety risks and the environmental impacts, some of which I have tried to get across here.  You guys have even been learning along with me some of the time.  These are all facts though.  It is a fact that there is risk, and it is a fact that nuclear power harnesses enough power to solve our energy problems.  It is a fact that nuclear power is the most viable energy solution on the table as of the time being.  The nuclear industry just is having a hard time creating an understanding about this.  It has not really communicated to us yet.