The State of Utah is investing in a pro-nuclear public affairs campaign leading up to getting one of those new mini nuclear reactors

Decades ago when I worked for the Center for Science in the Public, I learned about corporate campaigns to promote industrial production of various products that were often harmful, like tobacco (Tobacco Advertising: The Great Seduction).

Food companies did advertising too pushing unhealthy products.  I once made a comment to a journalist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about how McDonald's spent more on advertising in one day than CSPI's annual budget.

CSPI was really big on fighting alcohol advertising.  At the time liquor companies had an agreement to not advertise on television but that started changing around the time I worked there.  CSPI fought it.

Personally I didn't think it was a big deal as beer and wine were advertised and it seemed unreasonable to ban advertising of products when 80% of the population had no problem with it.

OTOH, advertising would increase consumption leading to more problems.  Like with sports betting today ("The impact of exposure to wagering advertisements and inducements on intended and actual betting expenditure: An ecological momentary assessment study," Journal of Behavioral Addictions) or vaping ("How Social Media Promotion of Vaping Targets Teens," Yale School of Medicine).

CSPI published a couple small books on "Marketing Booze to Blacks" and "Marketing Disease to Hispanics," back when alcohol and tobacco companies were big supporters of minority group organizations, minority media, and museums, aimed at selling their product disproportionately to people in distressed circumstances.

I was proud when I got a blurb in a column in the Columbia Journalism Review about a black media company specifically criticizing CSPI when hawking for ads.

Later there's been good coverage about this wrt plastics ("Plastic Wars: Industry Spent Millions Selling Recycling — To Sell More Plastic," NPR).  When we were in DC, there was a campaign against an city legislation to start a recycling deposit program, with the message that it would impose burdens on small stores.

Communications presentation board on the dangers of tobacco, Harambee African American Tobacco and Health Network.

WRT smoking, I was pleasantly surprised to go to a Juneteenth event in Ogden Utah and saw that two different organization booths featured anti smoking campaigns.

Anyway, for awhile the State of Utah has been running a campaign to "counter the mis-beliefs we have about nuclear energy" without acknowledging that there are reasonable concerns.  I've heard radio spots, but hadn't seen online ads.  This one is over the top.  It costs a f* of a lot more to pay for storing one barrel of nuclear waste and it isn't safer than properly packaging leftovers.

-- 3 Advanced Reactor Systems to Watch by 2030, US Department of Energy

-- "Utah and Industry Leaders Announce Major Nuclear Energy Partnership in Brigham City," Brigham City

-- "Utah officials announce Brigham City as state’s ‘nuclear hub’," Trementon Leader

The cost to store one barrel of nuclear waste ranges from $2,000 for low grade waste to many hundred thousands of dollars for highly radioactive waste.  One advantage of the new reactors is that are supposed to not generate as much waste and I think they claim they'll be able to use existing waste as feedstock.

Of course, the other big pro-corporate campaigning going on now is for data centers--it supports your use of the Internet ("Meta Campaigns to Change Opinions on Data Centers," New York Times).

From the article:

Meta, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Amazon have embarked on a building spree in the A.I. race, investing hundreds of billions of dollars to erect data centers to develop the technology. In doing so, they have fueled an increasingly political issue, with President Trump and lawmakers across the country criticizing the computing sites for driving up energy costs and straining local water supplies.

So in November and December, Meta spent $6.4 million to run a series of ads — including the one about Altoona — in the television markets of eight state capitals such as Sacramento, Salt Lake City and Tallahassee, Fla., as well as Washington, D.C., according to data from AdImpact, an analytics firm.