OPINION | DAVID HESS
Changing how we remember
While most industries are defined by their achievements the nuclear
sector is seemingly defined by its worst moments. When is it time to grow from the past and instead celebrate the future?
David Hess, Senior VP DeepGeo
OST INDUSTRIES ARE DEFINED by their achievements. The model T Ford revolutionised the automobile sector in 1908 and made car ownership available to the masses. The first submarine communication cable was
laid all the way back in 1851, allowing telegrams to be sent across the English Channel in what must have been a truly jaw-dropping event. The Wright brother’s iconic moment came in 1903 and ushered in the era of modern aviation soon after. These are examples of the kind of turning points that end up in museums and documentaries and which enter the public consciousness forever. They become the heritage of the industries that grow out of them. For the nuclear sector though the defining moments
are not highlights – they are lowlights. They are the mushroom clouds that blossomed over Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. And if you prompt people to think beyond nuclear weapons then probably the first
word to pass their lips will be Chornobyl – a sinister accident of mythic proportion that took place in 1986. These events have become part of the very DNA of the civil nuclear industry. They are embodied in the safety culture, the safeguards and non-proliferation protocols which most nuclear professionals operate under. It is a fairly distinctive feature of the nuclear sector that people don’t generally enter it with a sense of unbridled optimism at its ability to improve lives – but rather with a distinct air of caution about what can go wrong. In fact, many companies will actively hire for this conservative and risk averse mindset. This April, of course, marks 40 years from the
accident at Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Truthfully, there is not much genuine ‘myth’ left. It is probably the most documented, the most researched industrial accident in human history, with a library of reports and books dedicated to covering its every angle. And while there are differences in opinion as to the *exact* progression of events and the eventual number of fatalities – from less than a hundred to about 4,000 in the official literature – the fact is we now know more than enough to move on from this as the defining narrative of the industry. What we know after decades of study is that the
radiological impacts from the accident have turned out to be much, much less than once feared, while the socio- economic and psychological harm of the incident has turned out to be greater than anyone probably imagined. In other words, the true impacts are almost entirely outside of the nuclear sector’s ability to influence. This is not an attempt to trivialise the accident. Some
©Alexy Kovynev
Hey, guys, be careful there! You don’t want your mistake to become an eternal part of the DNA of the nuclear industry.
14 | May 2026 |
www.neimagazine.com
advocates are guilty of this – claiming that because the radiation-induced health impacts and death toll from the event are as low as they turned out to be that the public should just get over it. This comes across as disrespectful to the victims who lived through upheaval and hardship and had to deal with the lingering spectre of a dread risk they didn’t understand. ‘Moving on’ does imply that whatever lessons there
are to be learnt from the accident in terms of nuclear industrial safety have been learnt. It acknowledges that the global industry was never collectively
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