Post date: Sep 19, 2011 1:55:2 PM
I was in Belgium last week when news emerged of the event at the Marcoule waste treatment facility, in which one worker died and several more were injured. It was apparently not a nuclear accident, but very serious nonetheless. Some of the reporting in the French and Belgian media bordered on the hysterical, however, with commentators asking "what does this accident mean for the future of the nuclear industry?".
While any industrial safety accident, particularly one involving a fatality, is serious and hugely regrettable in itself, a slightly less hysterical and more nuanced response in the media would surely be more helpful to the general public.
It ultimately boils down to the kind of language used. You just knew it would be all about words, didn't you...
The BBC's report gave a pretty clear, fairly carefully worded picture of what appears to have happened: