Rebranding the Atom

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! Before I begin my proposal, let’s recap some basic history, OK?

Three Mile Island did not help our industry. Chernobyl we could blame on the Soviets, but our “Pennsylvania: the Price of Progress” campaign never took off the way we hoped. Since then, construction of new plants has ground to a halt. Resuscitating that giant lizard under Tokyo Bay didn’t help matters.

But there is some hope on the horizon. With the Obama administration proposing $54 billion in loan guarantees in 2011 for new plant construction, the time to strike is now. The industry is getting ready to explode, but without a strategic communications plan designed to improve the public image of nuclear power, whatever potential energy might be behind this plan will fizzle. Here, then, is my proposal for defusing the issue.

(Pause. Wait for laughter.)

Nuclear power has several advantages over conventional power. But to sell those advantages to a skeptical public, where such catastrophes as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and The Day After are still fresh in our memory, we need to counteract those images with an aggressive three-step campaign for “Rebranding the Atom.”

Step One: Fuel. The main arguments made over nuclear fuel are that it’s expensive to produce and can be turned into bombs. We’ll have to dismantle these arguments—difficult, but not impossible.

For “expensive” we can substitute “precious,” like diamonds. You know, the “diamonds are forever” campaign? Something similar, although “uranium is forever” isn’t what I have in mind. I’m thinking tequila. We should brand nuclear fuel with different levels of purity. We’ll call depleted U-238 “silver,” commercial-grade 3-percent U-235 fuel “gold” and weapons-grade 90-percent U-235 “añejo.” As for the bomb part, your chances of being affected by a nearby atomic  explosion are infinitesimal compared with, say, getting struck by lightning, stepping on a land mine or getting black lung from a nearby coal plant. We need to remind the public that the odds are in their favor. As Einstein would say, everything is relative!

Step Two: Reaction. As in “nuclear reaction.” This is where it gets tricky, since the byproduct of most nuclear reactions is radiation, and that’s kind of a buzzkill. There’s a strong fear element that we have to overcome. For that reason, we have to be very careful about messaging. No referencing the earlier incidents, or using the words “waste,” “radiation,” “radioactive,” “meltdown,” “fallout,” “cancer,” or “mutation.” And probably best not to mention “nuclear,” either.

Instead, we should point out that the sun, which gives life to everything on Earth, is nothing more than a giant reactor, and the gently warming sunlight is its radiation. How do we often see the sun depicted? With a happy face! (Show visual.) We’ll commission a bunch of children’s art for this project. Behold our new brand: “Happy Sun Power!”

Step Three: Waste. This is also somewhat problematic because even if most people didn’t think “monsters” whenever you say “half-life,” defining the term correctly is even worse. And who was the PR consultant who came up with “Yucky Mountain”? We might as well bury the waste at Mount Doom.

So instead of seeing waste as a problem for the human race that will last for several million years, let’s take a page from the design of state-of-the-art breeder reactors. It’s our fuel for the future! We’re not disposing of it; we’re setting it aside for future use! We’re investing it ... in a very deep cave with thick metal doors and robot guards.

With this program for reviving the nuclear power industry, the public will soon be Living Better Through Happy Sun Power!

Share this Article

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•