Emergency planning, public information, and the media: some recent experiences

Within the last two years, events at several nuclear plants generated national media attention. Most were classified as unusual events or alerts. One event necessitated a site area emergency classification. None of these events posed a hazard to the general public, yet each posed a serious threat to the credibility of the utilities. These and other events show that (1) media response to a nuclear technical severity of the accident and (2) utilities must have in place effective and coordinated emergency public information programs, particularly for lower level emergency classifications