We’d Feel Better With a Sweaty Hand on the Switch

It used to be easier to be a power company public relations man--I mean, way back before people started worrying about fuel shortages and pollution and the like.

Those were the quaint days when Reddy Kilowatt--a cute little fellow with a lightning-bolt body and a light bulb nose--was pictured on your monthly electric bill (which, by the way, was very low). In those days, the major publication from the power company was the comic book telling school kids not to fly their kites near power lines.

Nowadays it takes much more effort and savoir-faire to get the messages across. Take, for example, the latest in a series of “To Our Neighbors” booklets sent in March to 50,000 residences and businesses in southern Orange County and northern San Diego County by Southern California Edison Co.

It’s a slick presentation. You pick it up and you can’t help feeling good about whatever is inside.

For on the outside, beautifully reproduced in color, is a photograph of a purple sky with an orange sun setting into the sea. Lofty palms are silhouetted in the foreground.

Inset into that photograph is another of fluffy, utterly white pigeons perched around an ancient birdbath in the middle of a deep, cool lily pond. Another inset shows wind surfers skimming a blue, blue ocean.

And with your mind thus soothed by paradise at twilight, you open to the first page and learn that:

A serious emergency situation at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) is considered highly unlikely. In fact, recent studies have concluded that the chances of such an event occurring are even less than previously estimated. However, Edison, as well as local, state and federal agencies, have developed extensive plans to protect the public health and well-being in the event of such an emergency.

These plans are then described matter-of-factly, but they still summon up disturbing images.

“Public notification of a serious emergency will be by sirens, by news broadcasts and by roving public address systems . . .,” the booklet says. If you are asked to evacuate, “please do so calmly.”

Don’t wait for your children at school. “Students in school will be evacuated to Reception and Care Centers designated for their schools. They will be reunited at a later time with their families at the Reception and Care Centers designated for their home residences.”

Law enforcement officers will patrol evacuated areas, but lock your doors and windows when you leave. If your car breaks down, “raise the hood and wait; do not abandon your vehicle--help will soon arrive.”

I’m sorry, Reddy, palm trees or no, this is scary stuff. I know you’ve never had a serious incident out there, and I know the government makes you send out these booklets, but you’re handling it all wrong.

I believe your chart on Page 8 when it says you get 32,500 times more radiation from the base of the State of Liberty than from a nuclear power plant “during normal operation.” But your entire PR effort is based on that “during normal operation” proviso, and to some of us, that’s a wobbly foundation.

We’ve all read about unsinkable ships and fireproof theaters, all built with state-of-the-art technology. Some sank and some burned.

We’ve all read about nuclear power plant accidents too. Just last year--five years after the Three Mile Island plant spewed radiation into the air and sent 140,000 people fleeing--we were hearing the same old words from the people who wanted to restart it. Quote: “There is absolutely no health or safety threat to the public.” What you don’t understand, Reddy, is that we ordinary people--whose cars always break 75 miles from home and whose stereos keep eating our best tapes--don’t really trust our own machines. How can we trust yours?

We don’t want to see on our TVs some technician standing in front of San Onofre, smiling tranquilly and telling us not to worry, nothing is ever going to go wrong. If you want to make points with us, show us a nervous technician. He should tell us, the viewing audience:

“Hi, folks. This is the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, and if it ever goes up, we’re all in big trouble. You think you’d have problems? I work here. I’d be the first to see my pork chops fried, so we sweat it out every minute we’re here. That’s why you can relax--because we’re tense and very, very careful.”

But I cannot convince Edison. “That’s what I would consider the negative approach,” said Bud Jackley, Edison’s manager of nuclear affairs and emergency planning. “I don’t think that you working for a PR firm would come to a utility and say that’s what you should do. I don’t think that you’d sell anything.

“My approach is that we’ve never had a situation that was a danger to the citizens. To say there’s a chance, well, when you buy a car, the car dealer doesn’t say there’s a chance you may have an accident.” Well, I tried. What I can’t make them understand is that my car does have accidents and does break down, but it’s not running on enriched uranium. When it blows a gasket, what it spews into the air is not radioactive. I think we can be a little less concerned about car reliability. There’s not so much at stake.