Sam Collins, and the Art of Writing Press Releases

Dear God,

The intolerance of the people of Vermont and nearby New Hampshire and Massachusetts never ceases to amaze me.

Everyone is mad because, in my press release announcing that Vermont Yankee was powering up again after refueling, I failed to mention the additional 16 cracks in the steam dryer that we found during the outage. I also decided not to mention the five degraded wooden support beams we discovered in the reactor's only safety-related cooling tower cell.

I've explained that mention of those problems would have made my press release too long. Don't these people know that press releases are one-page affairs—and that's on 8-1/2" paper, not on an endless roll of toilet stuff? Don't they know that a whole hunk of that one measly page will always be taken up by the headline and the contact information? And that then there's the date and all of the Who, What, When, and Where stuff to include? I mean there are rules to follow!

Given all of those constraints, the single hardest part of press release writing is the headline. I thought I did a good job in my release announcing our power-up after the outage. I billed the release as a list of the successes we'd had, and the copy matched the headline. I mean, the whole point of a headline is to grab attention, all the while keeping people optimistic about their chances for survival.

So to all of those Negative Nancys out there who think they know more than I do, I'm going to distribute a document that will make them eat crow, gosh darn it. The document is actually a quiz, and it's called….

Humility 101: What Makes You Think You Can Write a Press Release?

Here are some dicey situations Vermont Yankee is in. Chose from among the headlines offered, and then feel grateful that this is my job, not yours.

Situation 1. The Vermont Energy Partnership ("VEP"), of which Entergy is a prominent, high-stakes member, wants to convince legislators to relicense Vermont Yankee. What is the headline of a convincing press release?


Independent Study Says Electricity Will Cost More without Vermont Yankee
VEP Study Says Electricity Will Cost More without Vermont Yankee
Patrick Moore Says Electricity Will Cost More without Vermont Yankee
Patrick Moore Didn't Found Greenpeace and They Hate Him Anyway
.

Situation 2. The public is angry and wary because of chronic cooling tower problems and a consistent pattern of half-truths emerging from Entergy and the NRC. The NRC performed a special safety inspection and invited the public to a meeting at the Latchis Theatre to explain that the safety inspection had pretty much given VY a clean bill of health. As it turns out, that wasn't even half true. The NRC had found huge problems—the 16 aforementioned cracks in the steam dryer and the five aforementioned support beams that were dangerously degraded in the sole safety cell in the cooling towers. What is the headline of a face-saving press release?


NRC Cites Visibility for Probe Failure
NRC Explains that "These Things Happen"
Vermont Yankee Donates to Brattleboro Museum & Arts Center
Independent Study Says Press Releases and Public Meetings Should Never Run Long
Independent Study Says Electricity Will Cost More without Vermont Yankee


Situation 3. Those activists may look ugly, but thank God, God, that they're not mean, too. Quite a few know about the role that Sam Collins, currently the NRC's Region 1 administrator in charge of enforcing safety at Vermont Yankee, played in the near disaster at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant, which would have wrought death, destruction, and, yes, prayers about cancer to Toledo, Ohio. They know about Sam Collins's role, but they've been too kind to make a big deal out of it. You see, he's probably embarrassed, and they're being sensitive. (Background info: In late winter of 2002 the Davis-Besse plant shut down for refueling. It was during the refueling shutdown that engineers discovered that, over the course of six years of inadequate inspections, corrosive coolant had been leaking from the core. The coolant had created a six-by-five-by-four inch cavity in the liner of the core. All that remained of the liner was a warped piece of steel a little thicker than tin foil. It and it alone contained approximately 2200 psi of highly radioactive internal environment. Had the pressure burst through the remaining lining and into the reactor containment building, it might have set in motion a core meltdown, and just 21 miles away from Toledo. At that time, Sam Collins—"our" Sam Collins—was the NRC nuclear reactor regulation director for that region. He was the person at the NRC who had allowed FirstEnergy executives to talk the NRC out of issuing a shutdown order at the plant, and he did that even though at least one NRC inspector reporting to Sam had a photograph showing the Davis-Besse reactor head with streaks of suspicious looking rust. Sam was also in charge of NRC oversight of the Peach Bottom nuclear plant when, in 2007, the NRC allowed guards to continue sleeping on the job, even though a whistleblower let them know it was happening. Finally that whistleblower sent video of the sleeping guards to a local TV station.) Anyway, in the event that our local activists do eventually try to make a big deal out of the connection between Davis-Besse's and even Peach Bottom's lack of oversight and ours, the headline you write is:


NRC Cites Visibility for Probe Failure
NRC Probably Should Have Shut Down Vermont Yankee When Inspecting Cooling Towers
"Look, I'm Sorry. I Goofed Again," says Sam Collins
If You Don't All Behave, We'll Have the Next "Latchis Meeting" at the Kipling Cinema, And Almost No One Will Get Seats
Independent Study Says Electricity Will Cost More without Vermont Yankee


I hope you can see, Lord, that writing a press release that all parties to a deal like is a wing and a prayer kind of thing.

Amen,

Fake-Rob