How transparent is transparent enough? A case study of a minor nuclear event

摘要: On the 4th of June, 2008, a nuclear event occurred at the Krško NPP in Slovenia. Even though it was classified as level zero on the INES scale, the transparency policy of the Slovenian nuclear safety authorities prompted it to notify the international community. The plant was initially in an emergency state due to an unidentified leak, which in turn triggered the activation of the National Response Plan. This was the first time that the European ECURIE notification system was used outside the exercise framework. Consequently, media response was enormous and news framing varied from country to country. In this contribution we present a content analysis of the media articles related to this event and we report on the main results. The analysis included more than 200 published articles from printed and spoken media in Slovenia, the neighbouring countries, other EU member states and ECURIE members. The research methodology combined a qualitative approach with a quantitative one. Special attention was paid to the framing of the event, the messages communicated or omitted, the sources of information and the main focus of the media texts. The analysis revealed that even a transparent communication policy in a minor nuclear event by the affected country may still trigger a high intensity media coverage, emotional reactions and heated political discussion when not accompanied by an equally transparent response in the communication by international organisations. The reason lies in that the main media sources in countries with open political questions related to nuclear energy tend to end up being the politicians, rather than the resident …