The crummy thing about the Krümmel nuclear power plant is the disinformation policy – those featherweight press releases
reassuring the public that plant operations are proceeding normally and that no radiation has escaped into the atmosphere.
Then, when a journalist tries to piece together a picture of what's truly going on, he or she encounters a centrifuge of PR
forces machined to avert any nuclear industry mishap.
In 1992, the Schleswig-Holstein Minister for Social Affairs, Günter Janssen, authorized a scientific commission to
investigate the cluster of childhood leukemia cases arising near the Krümmel Nuclear Power Plant in Geesthacht by Hamburg.
The alarming frequency of this cancer of the blood that develops in the bone marrow had unsettled parents living
across this thinly populated region, a concern that found its way into local newspapers. Radiation expert Professor Dr.
Edmund Lengfelder, a member of the commission, recalls: "After a few years, in which we took a number of probes and
analyzed all the possible material environmental factors, we detected a number of unacceptable radiation irregularities."
Government and industry experts countered: such irregularities can have no impact on the incidence of leukemia
among the children of the region. "Immune deficiencies" were singled out as the primary risk factor, even as the commission
laid out its chromosome analyses and findings detailing radioactive contamination in plant fibers and house dust.
The media accepted the immune deficiency story. It wouldn't have mattered whether the greatest spike of childhood
leukemia in all the world was raging along the Elbe – the theme didn't break the interest barrier. Parents and children
of the region were left alone with their angst, forebodings, and disquieting statistics.
Or almost.
Two journalists from German ZDF Television, Barbara
Dickmann and Angelica Fell, began investigating the equivocal
nature of the industry's answer. Their film, Und keiner weiß warum
("And No One Knows Why"), prevented the cancer clusters surrounding Krümmel from being dismissed as unlucky coincidence
– the explanation the atom lobby and some people in government were trying to peddle. Immediately, Dickman
and Fell were mobbed by a whirlwind of defamatory attacks and slanders unlike anything investigative reporters have
ever experienced in Germany.
The quality of their journalistic work, however, enabled Dickmann and Fell to sovereignly weather the storm. The pair
continued with their theme, following among other stories a nationwide children's cancer study examining areas surrounding
nuclear reactors: "The study confirms that there is a correlation between the nearness of a dwelling to a nuclear
power plant at the point of time of diagnosis and the risk, before the 5th year of age, to contract cancer or leukemia"
(German Federal Office for Radiation Protection).
There is reason to doubt whether this unambiguous find-ing would have seen the light of day were it not for
the work of Dickmann and Fell. What is doubtless is that these two veteran investigative reporters have few peers in
German public broadcasting. It takes an enormous amount of cour-age, drive, to illuminate the dusky shadows in which the
nuclear industry thrives.
The Nuclear-Free Future Award for Barbara Dickmann and Angelica Fell should be understood
as a challenge and encouragement to the next generation of journalists (perhaps all too worried about viewership quotas): yes, truth can make a lasting difference.
is presented by the
Franz Moll Foundation
for the Coming Generations
to
for their personal courage
and inspiring journalistic commitment
in their quest for truth
to undo truth's mockery
