Apex author Ameila Frahm was putting the final touches on a children's book about nuclear power when radiation leaks at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi reactor suddenly fixed her subject under an international microscope.
"The first thing I thought was, 'Well, I can just forget it now,'" she said of the project, five years in the making and set for publication late this year.
But Frahm is not cowed by controversy. Her first book spoke frankly to children about cancer, and this one was inspired by another nuclear-related trial by fire - her first job, doing public relations at a nuclear plant, where she began work shortly before the Chernobyl disaster.
So, convinced of her book's increased relevance, she pushed up the publication date and went back to work.
"After Japan, I think it's a subject people are more interested in and parents are more apt to want to talk to their children about," Frahm said of the book, "How a Nuclear Power Plant Really Works," due out in June.
From her own life
Broaching touchy subjects is a centerpiece of Frahm's writing career. Her first book, "Tickles Tabitha's Cancer-tankerous Mommy," prepares children for the mood swings, depression and overall crankiness they can expect when a parent goes through cancer treatment.
Frahm was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1994, when her children, Tabitha and Jordan, were 4 and 2. When Frahm couldn't find books to explain to them what was happening to her, she decided to write her own.
But her pitches to publishers were met with a stack of rejection letters. Some said there weren't enough young mothers with cancer to make it marketable. Others thought it was just too unpleasant.
She published the book herself in 2001 - after a friend died of cancer. Now, many doctors recommend it as a resource for children of cancer patients, and Frahm has lectured widely on the topic of helping children deal with cancer.
Frahm sees a parallel between "Tickles Tabitha" and her current project: Both seek to dispel fears by providing information.
Working at the South Texas Project Nuclear Power Plant, Frahm saw how a dearth of facts can breed fear. She was charged with persuading people to embrace a nuclear plant being built in their backyards at a time when the word "nuclear" was often followed by "disaster" in the public mind.
"People didn't know anything about nuclear power," Frahm said. "They were just running into the visitor's center asking if it was going to blow up."
A complex subject
One of her first jobs was to create an education program for children, and she struggled with the complex material. She knew that children, and many of their parents, were in the same boat.
Even worse, she feared that technical complexity lent the plant an aura of mystery that made it even more frightening.
"I remember thinking I wish there were a more creative approach so people like me could grasp it," Frahm said. "It's so overwhelming sometimes for the layperson."
She tinkered with several formats for her book before settling on the current narrative, driven by a rat and a bird who break concepts such as fission into simple terms. Frahm held a series of self-described "guinea pig parties" at Progress Energy's Harris Nuclear Plant in New Hill and at local schools, tweaking the text and pictures based on critiques by children and teachers. She also sought comments from the American Nuclear Society and other industry experts.
She acted out parts of the book using puppets and is developing a curriculum with video clips to go with it.
The book is not pro-nuclear as much as "not anti-nuclear," Frahm said. "It's just 'This is how it works.'"
Or, as nuclear expert Theodore Rockwell put it in an early review, it allows children to "learn the basic facts about nuclear energy without first being scared witless."
The book makes no mention of meltdowns, radiation leaks or other risks. Those omissions trouble Jim Warren, executive director of N.C. WARN, a nonprofit group that opposes new nuclear plants and seeks to make existing ones safer.
"Given the fact that we do have plants all around us, I support efforts to try to demystify the technology," Warren said. "But downplaying the accurate risks is not helpful to the public discussion."
While she expects a greater backlash than she would have encountered before the tsunami in Japan, she says industry proponents are also more likely to embrace the book as they seek to get information to the public.
Having worked in the trenches years ago, she was surprised as she wrote the book to find some complacency among nuclear industry officials regarding their public image - a sense of calm that she suspects has evaporated in recent months.
"I got the impression that they didn't have to sell it anymore," she said. "People had gotten comfortable with the idea of nuclear power. Now they'll have to sell it all over again."
