West Wing and Nuclear Power

I think it may be a genuine gauge of the quality of writing on the West Wing to say that the more mundane the problem the better the writing. The more catastrophic the problem - the worse the writing and the more loose the writers play with the facts.

When the show was at its peak, problems that formed the core of plot lines included things like Sam accidentally sleeping with a hooker and the President trying to find out if stuffing should be cooked before being placed in a turkey. Now the producers of the show are trying to cover up inferior writing with bigger problem situations. You had peace in the Middle East and now a potential melt down at a nuclear power plant. It's probably a good thing the show is going off the air otherwise next season we'd have episodes about how the administration is weathering the fall-out from a nuclear war with China.

It was always the dialog that made the show but the show always required a certain amount of suspention of reality - I mean the whole premise is that the Governor of New Hampshire gets elected President of the United States. Please believe me when I say that no Senator or Governor of New Hampshire will ever get elected President - one Franklin Pierce was enough.

Now that the dialog is in the toilet - people are less likely to suspend belief. Take the issue of a nuclear power plant with "leaky pipes". The people who know what they are talking about when it comes to nuclear power aren't happy with the show for playing fast and loose with the facts about nuclear power. Eric at Off Wing Opinion (who knows a thing or two about nuclear power himself) pointed me to two posts. The first's conclusions are scathing:

After watching the episode tonight, I was astounded that, in addition to the technical errors, they couldn't even get logistical and administrative details correct. Plants are required by federal law to have highly-developed and detailed evacuation plans. In the extremely unlikely event that an evacuation would be necessary, officials would not be playing it by ear. There is also a finely tuned communications plan, onsite NRC inspectors would know the details of the situation as they happened, and NRC headquarters would be directly linked to an emergency command center. The mass confusion among the heads of the affected government agencies would just not occur. Furthermore, the EPA doesn't set radiation dose limits, and the president would never have the authorization to make operational decisions.

In short, the writers didn't just make a small, obscure highly technical error here and there. They wrote a complete farce and made no attempt to make it plausible.

I did like that Alan Alda's character pointed out the contribution nuclear makes in combating climate change, but that still doesn't excuse NBC for perpetuating nuclear myths that make a fair public debate impossible.

The second continues in the relevation that the West Wing is using fantasy land logic to run down nuclear power:

Did you ever consider where all that steam being "pumped" to the auxiliary building was coming from? [Why am I suddenly reminded of the kid trying to collect fog in a bucket? "Pump steam to the auxiliary building?"] Simple physics will tell you that the steam is generated by taking heat away from the core. So, you can't have a lack of cooling and too much steam generated at the same time. Pick one problem or the other...

I'm frankly surprised that NBC allows this garbage to air seeing how the parent company of NBC is GE and that GE makes nuclear power plant components.

It is a shame that nuclear power has to get slandered like this. Just yesterday I ate lunch just 400 yards from a nuclear reactor and me and my friend were probably the only ones in the restaurant aware that we were so close to a reactor. The reactor I'm referring to is at Worcester Polytech (I think they are the only university in the US with their own reactor) and I was eating lunch at the Sole Proprietor (best seafood in Worcester).

I think every major university should have its own nuclear reactor because the energy generated to run campuses across the country would probably reduce greenhouse emissions more than if a third of the country converted to hybrid vehicles. I won't hold my breath for that idea to be proposed on the West Wing though. They are more likely to propose Lorax power (you remember how the Lorax was able to fly away at the end of the book simply by lifting himself by his pants?). That's it! If everyone had Lorax power we'd be able to do away with cars completely. Don't laugh - with the current writers and producers its more probably you'd see Lorax power proposed on the West Wing than for you to see any real facts about nuclear energy.