Public perception on the benefits and risks of nuclear power plants_a simplified study

A comunicação de riscos vem se tornando uma atividade indispensável à formação de uma opinião pública que avalie de uma forma racional e equilibrada a construção de novas centrais nucleares em países que utilizam ou pretendam utilizar esta tecnologia. Favorecidos pela tradição de considerar que a ciência é suficiente para convencer qualquer cidadão ao provar o domínio sobre o processo, as organizações nucleares organizam-se para tal empreendimento dando preferência às explicações técnicas, às minuciosidades relacionadas ao risco destas instalações. Entre os cidadãos comuns, no entanto, a percepção do risco é subjetiva e, portanto não é nivelada com a percepção que tais esforços de comunicação de risco tentam propor. Algumas vezes tal percepção é subestimada e, mais frequentemente, exagerada. A maximização ou até a extrapolação desta da percepção de risco é incentivada pela mídia sensacionalista e movimentos de defesa do meio ambiente. Este trabalho estuda a percepção e a considera como relevante neste esforço de promover a aceitação das usinas termonucleares propondo abandonar o discurso tradicional de riscos e aumentar os esforços em comunicar benefícios, de forma similar à propostas de marketing para produtos, serviços ou, como neste caso, a venda de uma idéia. Há uma revisão bibliográfica de conceitos de risco, de comunicação de riscos e de marketing. Em seguida, um estudo prático com base em centenas de entrevistas com estudantes de diversos níveis da região metropolitana da grande São Paulo. O estudo traz importantes informações sobre a forma como tais pessoas percebem as usinas termonucleares, seus benefícios e quais os atores que as influenciam positiva ou negativamente neste processo.Public acceptance of the nuclear based electricity generation depends on many variables that can be affected by circumstances and interests, which although seemingly not close to the issue, can strongly influence the final outcome. Explicit or consented positions assumed by opinion makers and some segments of society are subject to episodic waves of interaction through the media and they permeate to the public in a process that is very complex to be fully understood. The modeling of such process is a very complicated undertaking, and gives no assurance of practical results concerning to what, how and who, should be given prominence in the interactions with the media and the general public. In this context, the risk communication has assumed a leading role and, as a consequence, most of the interaction with the public has been done with both defensive language and content. This study has tried a simple and practical approach to the problem, in such a way as to gather some interesting subsidies to treat this issue in a different way. The basic assumption is that in a similar way as individuals base their decision to acquire a new good or service on a \"intuitive\" cost-benefit judgment, society (as a collection of individuals) also manifest their acceptance (or not) with respect to industrial installations and undertakings by comparing risks and benefits according to their perception. An exploratory survey was carried out in a few high schools, colleges and MBA courses in the state of Sâo Paulo, Brazil. A first part was aimed to catch and understand the public perception of. (a) the Intrinsic value of the electric energy, (b) the need to universalize the access to electricity, (c) nuclear plants, (d) the acceptance deficit of nuclear power as compared to other sources of energy, (e) the benefits a nuclear plant can bring, (f) who does and who does not deserves credibility to speak about nuclear plants. The second part was addressed to grasp a picture of more relevant distortions concerned to the public perception of a nuclear power plant risks. The analysis of the survey results and the utilization of a model inspired by the marketing way of value communication suggest a different approach to the communication with the public concerning to nuclear power plants. In this proposal, named Value Strategy, a matrix of risks vs. benefits is segmented in nine regions, where the central region corresponds to the current situation and the others show the possible (hypothetical) future situations after the installation of a nuclear power plant. There are three favorable regions, inductives of acceptance and three unfavorable ones, or routed to rejection. Based on the understanding of the targeted public, as partially revealed by the survey, different nuances can be emphasized in the communication to maximize its effect, without any detour to ethical behavior. Results also disclose various complementary subsidies to help the communication strategy, mainly regarded to the communication agents and to the more effective argument areas according to factors such as: sex, age ranges and educational level