The American reactor that was closed by fake news

Fake facts, conspiracy theories, nuclear fear, science denial, baseless charges of corruption, and the shouting down of reputable health officials. All these things happened 25 years ago, long before the days of social media, in a bipartisan, celebrity-driven episode of science denial.  Yet the story offers valuable lessons for what works and what does not (mostly the latter) for anyone wanting to head off such incidents.

The episode in question concerned one of the more valuable scientific facilities in the US, the High Flux Beam Reactor (HFBR) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. As I mentioned in a previous column and in my book The Leak, the HFBR was a successful research instrument that was used to make medical isotopes and study everything from superconductors to proteins and metals. “Experimentalists saw the reactor as the place to go,” recalls the physicist William Magwood IV, then at the US Department of Energy.

But in 1997 lab scientists discovered a leak of water from a pool, located in the same building as the reactor, where its spent fuel was stored. The leak contained tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that decays with a half-life of about 12 years, releasing low-energy electrons that can be stopped by a few sheets of paper. The total amount of tritium in the leak was about that in typical self-illuminating “EXIT” signs.

The protestors’ tactics are a familiar part in today’s political environment: tell people they are in danger and insist that anyone who says otherwise is lying

The leak was not a health hazard. The tritium would never end up in drinking water either on- or off-site. In any case, it would dilute and decay to almost zero in the decades before it would reach the lab border. But none of that stopped a group of anti-nuclear protestors, led by the actor Alec Baldwin, from demanding the reactor be permanently shut down; some even sought to close the entire lab.

The protestors’ tactics are a familiar part in today’s political environment: tell people they are in danger and insist that anyone who says otherwise is lying. One anti-HFBR activist, for example, claimed that the out-of-operation reactor, whose fuel elements had been removed and shipped offsite, might melt down. A leader of the group said the lab was “evil” and “killing people”.

In the pinnacle of the anti-nuclear activists’ campaign, Baldwin arranged for an eight-year-old child to appear on The Montel Williams Show, a US national TV programme, to say that his cancer had been caused by the Brookhaven lab – even as the American Cancer Society said that there was no known cause for that cancer. Still, the show reached nine million people and raised money for the group.

Lab scientists desperately tried to point out that the leak was not hazardous, that the HFBR operated safely, and that it was a valuable instrument. They reminded people that federal, state and local experts had examined the numbers and found the leak to be not a health hazard. But they were drowned out by the activists, who had better funding, apocalyptic rhetoric and media clout.

Frustrated, the scientists tried to adopt some of the activists’ tactics. They approached politicians, but the only one they managed to recruit was John “Mugsy” Powell, head of the local Suffolk county Republican Committee, who demanded that they engage in work for his party. (They declined, which was fortunate as Powell was later arrested on corruption charges.) The scientists even sought support from pro-science movie star Alan Alda, who said no because the issue was too controversial.

Brookhaven scientists, comparing The Montel Williams Show to the Salem witch trials and the rants of Joseph McCarthy, began a letter-writing campaign – then cancelled it, realizing it would only provoke a second show. The scientists had to pin their hopes on the fact that the charges made on the show were so obviously baseless that they would ultimately vanish. Unfortunately, they didn’t.

The voices of Baldwin and other members of the group, who were influential fund-raisers for the Democratic party, were louder than those of the scientists. Politicians in Washington were listening. In November 1999, two-and-a-half years after the discovery of the leak, the then DOE Secretary Bill Richardson terminated the reactor. A campaign of fake facts had damaged US science, and these methods are flourishing today with potentially even more disastrous consequences.

Every now and then, and in modest ways, the scientists did succeed in getting their views across. At one public meeting I witnessed, an HFBR scientist was heckled by six or so activists sitting right behind me in the back of the auditorium. After the scientist had mentioned the reactor’s role in investigating a certain kind of cancer treatment, one activist loudly interrupted, demanding: “Who did that ever help?” Someone else sitting just in front of them turned around and said quietly, “Me.” That silenced the activists, at least for a few minutes. Such exchanges, which made the value of the device more concrete, should have occurred onstage, rather than in the back of the room.

I remember another meeting at which a scientist was presenting tritium data and its health impact when an anti-nuclear activist in the audience stood up and shouted: “You love the numbers more than you love people!” A vast majority of the audience fervently applauded. The scientist fell silent for a moment, then spoke softly.

A few years ago, he said, he wanted to know if it was safe to install car airbags to protect his grandchild. Newspapers had run horrific tales and grisly photos of children smothered by the devices. The scientist said that he looked up studies of airbags, and found that the statistics showed that installing airbags was far and away safer than not doing so. “I love the numbers because I love my grandchild,” he told the audience.

The critical point

That man’s quiet humility calmed the crowd – again, for a time. Still, the momentary success of his story illustrated the value of appealing to those who doubt the connection between scientific activity and human welfare not as mendacious or as villains – but as sense-seekers. If you want to see today’s political landscape in miniature and learn from what worked and what didn’t – mostly the latter – look at the firestorm that erupted at Brookhaven a quarter of a century ago.