(April 11, 2003) The last couple of years have seen a great increase in nuclear-related news sites. Here is a selection of these sites, plus tips on obtaining information on a particular subject.
(585.5506) WISE Amsterdam - Campaigners with Internet access can now obtain nuclear power-related news every day from a number of sources. E-mail mailing lists for nuclear news have been around for some time and are continuing to grow in number. However, in the last couple of years, the most spectacular change has been the emergence of a variety of news sites with quite comprehensive coverage of nuclear power issues.
Electronic press clippings
For many years, utilities have used their internal press clippings services to keep middle and senior management informed whenever the company appears in the press. This service helped them in their propaganda war against anti-nuclear campaigners, who usually could not afford to look through large numbers of newspapers for relevant news. To redress this balance, the WISE network was set up in 1978 to provide news to nuclear campaigners all over the world.
Now, nuclear news sites mean that anyone with Internet access can see what the media is saying on nuclear issues. Many sites offer what are effectively "electronic press clippings" - links to articles on newspaper, TV and Internet news sites.
Some sites cover news from the industry's point of view; others from an anti-nuclear perspective. However, both types are useful, and indeed often link to the same media reports. Here are some notable examples:
- www.1nuclearplace.com – global coverage of nuclear news in English, industry perspective
- www.nucnews.com – global coverage of nuclear news (with a large proportion of U.S. news) in English, from the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
- www.sortirdunucleaire.org – news in French (mostly nuclear and with a focus on France) from the French Nuclear Phase-out Network (Réseau "Sortir du nucléaire"). Click on the relevant month under "Actualité" to see the news.
- www.prop1.org/nucnews – selection of global news on nuclear, other energy, military, justice and activist issues from Proposition One.
- www.nukeworker.com/news – a computer-selected scan of nuclear-related news items.
Some NGOs such as the Nuclear Control Institute (www.nci.org) now include similar "daily news" features on their web sites.
Another option is to use themed areas on new sites. For example, nuclear news in German can be found at de.fc.yahoo.com/a/atom.html (part of the Yahoo! Germany news site).
Trade press
Even the trade press now offers a limited selection of news for free. Platts, who produce the well-known trade journals Inside NRC, NuclearFuel and Nucleonics Week, now offer "Platts Nuclear News Flashes" on their web site (www.platts.com/nuclear). Their selection of five items gets changed quite often - typically a few times a week - and the longer feature article less often, maybe once a month.
The industry's own news agency NucNet also offers free features on its site www.worldnuclear.org but they are not so "generous" as Platts, only offering one feature article at any time (NB: not to be confused with the World Nuclear Association's site www.worldnuclear.org).
Antiatom.ru
NIRS/WISE Russia (Ecodefense!) with the support of the Socio-Ecological Union has recently launched a unique anti-nuclear news agency (www.antiatom.ru) which offers global coverage of nuclear news in Russian, with some English articles.
Environmental and alternative news services
There are several news services specializing in environmental issues. Planet Ark (www.planetark.org) offers daily environmental news stories from Reuters, and often includes stories on nuclear issues. Other environmental news services include Environmental News Service (www.ens-news.com) and Environmental News Network (www.enn.com). The site www.ecoportal.net features environmental news in Spanish.
So many progressive and alternative news sites have sprung up that it can be hard to keep track of them. However, the most ambitious alternative news project is almost certainly Indymedia, a network of independent media centers all around the world (for a list, see under "Media centers" at www.indymedia.org)). Indymedia uses "free publishing", so that anyone can post news on most Indymedia web sites.
More specific news
There are also some sites for more specific issues. For example, WISE Uranium Project's news site (www.wise-uranium.org/new.html) offers uranium-related news.
However, for really specific issues - such as a local nuclear plant - a news search is probably best. One possibility is to use the search function included on most news sites; another is to use a search engine. However, both of these have a tendency to produce a long list of items, many of which are not relevant, unless the search is on a very specific word.
Recently, the well-known search engine Google has launched a news search service (news.google.com) which, although still in the "beta" (test) version, often produces very useful results. At present it is mostly limited to news in English.
WISE/NIRS
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the web sites of both NIRS (www.nirs.org) and WISE Amsterdam (www.antenna.nl/wise) contain search engines, enabling relevant texts to be located quickly amongst the thousands of articles in our archives. Also, on the subject of archives, the Laka archive, one of the world's largest archives of nuclear power information, now has a web site (www.laka.org) which includes a book list. The Laka archive is located in the same offices as WISE Amsterdam and is used in the production of the WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor.
Contact: WISE Amsterdam