Ann Stouffer Bisconti—ANS member since 1990

We welcome ANS members with long careers in the community to submit their own stories so that the personal history of nuclear power can be capured. For information on submitting your stories, contact [email protected].

It is 1983. I receive a phone call from Herbert Krugman, my boss in my first job at Marplan, a prestigious Madison Avenue research firm. He had moved to General Electric and hired me through UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute for research that gave GE a blueprint for recruiting top graduates from their key universities. "There is a new organization that will be looking for someone to direct all their research," he tells me. "I can't reveal what it's about, but I told them they have to hire you."

This new organization was the U.S. Council for Energy Awareness (USCEA), a forerunner of the Nuclear Energy Institute. Industry leaders had set up two main organizations in response to the Three Mile Island-2 accident: one to promote excellence in operations (Institute of Nuclear Power Operations) and one to promote excellence in communications (USCEA). I was charged with conducting all the research necessary to guide a large communications program that included advertising as well as media and public relations.

The USCEA's first survey, designed by Cambridge Reports, was already in the field when I was hired. The findings were surprising. Public opinion was not dead set against nuclear energy; it was much more nuanced, and the public was open to information. In fact, early on, we identified a "perception gap": the public perceived public opinion to be less favorable than their own.

Harold B. Finger, then president of the USCEA, was frustrated by a continual "woe is me" industry attitude and asked Alan Waltar (ANS past president, 1994-95) to put me on the program for the next ANS annual conference. Alan at first refused, saying that he did not trust surveys conducted for the industry, but he finally agreed. I surveyed and quickly tabulated audience opinions and perceptions of public opinion and reported them next to the actual public opinion findings. The ANS audience could then see their own perception gap-just like that of the general public. That day was the start of my special friendship with Alan Waltar and ANS.

The USCEA advertising program hit a roadblock due to initial misperceptions. The ad agency, Ogilvy & Mather, strongly opposed testing their advertising because they feared negative reactions. A costly TV commercial featuring the song "Tomorrow" from Annie aired without prior testing. It communicated that solar will come in the future but, for now, we need coal and nuclear energy. When we finally tested the commercial, we found that the solar message was heard but the nuclear energy message was lost.

We learned important lessons from this fiasco:

• We had to test all proposed advertising. From then on, more than half of the proposed ads failed the test and were not used.
• We also had to test messages about nuclear energy. That was later expanded to include tests of messages on all related topics such as safety, waste, radiation, license renewal, and new plants.
• The advertising had to make nuclear energy stand out. Very quickly, we learned that putting "nuclear energy" in the headline was far from a turnoff; it drew people in. The public felt uninformed about nuclear energy and wanted to learn more. They appreciated the information. That is true to this day.

I still run the National Nuclear Energy Public Opinion Surveys through Bisconti Research Inc., as well as plant neighbor surveys. There is much to be understood about public opinion beyond "horse race numbers," which are increasingly favorable. Most of the public, especially women, neither strongly favor nor strongly oppose nuclear energy. They are fence-sitters and welcome more information. That is the challenge that calls for everyone in the industry to speak out.