A depressing documentary called Waste: The Nuclear Nightmare recently aired on the Sundance Channel. This is mostly a harrowing and sobering account of radioactive contamination all over the world as a result of failed waste storage sites, but there is a slightly silly scene in the film where they are interviewing the public relations guy from a nuclear re-processing facility in France, and he’s clearly not allowed by the legal department of the company to use the word ‘contaminated’. They ask him if the area is contaminated, and he says: “No, it’s not contaminated.” So they ask him, since they find trace amounts of radioactive waste in the area, what would he call it? And the spokesman is just embarrassed and confused and doesn’t know how to answer, but he still denies it’s contaminated no matter what they say. You can clearly tell that this guy is new to public relations. If he was a real pro, he’d say: “No, it’s not contaminated with radioactive waste. It’s just… enhanced with it. Radiation is a value-added component of the area. You can’t get this stuff just anywhere!” And by the end of the interview, even the filmmakers would want to buy a piece of that land.
