TRUTHDIG RADIO
"Going Nuclear: An Environmentalist Makes the Case" -- This week on
Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The director of "Pandora's
Promise" pitches nuclear power. Also: Bringing quality food to the
poor, and bullying in sports.
<http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/going_nuclear_an_environmentalist_makes_the_case_20131107>
Pandora's Promise (2013)
Documentary - 15 November 2013 (UK)
Ratings: 6.1/10 from 161 users
Director: Robert Stone
Writer: Robert Stone
Stars: Stewart Brand, Gwyneth Cravens, Mark Lynas
A feature-length documentary about the history and future of nuclear
power. The film explores how and why mankind's most feared and
controversial technological discovery is now passionately embraced by
many of those who once led the charge against it. Operating as
history, cultural meditation and contemporary exploration, PANDORA'S
PROMISE aims to inspire a serious and realistic debate over what is
without question the most important question of our time: how do we
continue to power modern civilization without destroying it?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1992193/?ref_=fn_al_tt_8
A Conversation With Director Robert Stone of Pandora's Promise
Posted: 11/07/2013 10:05 am
Govindini Murty
Filmmaker and Co-Editor of Libertas Film Magazine
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/govindini-murty/a-conversation-with-direc_b_4232707.html>
Robert Stone goes nuclear
November 06, 2013 7:00 am * DOUG MOE
<http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/columnists/doug-moe/doug-moe-robert-stone-goes-nuclear/article_5e614e3b-59d3-5323-b737-0752432069c5.html>
'Pandora's Promise' director defends his controversial nuclear energy film
By Robert Stone, Special to CNN
November 8, 2013
<http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/07/opinion/pandora-nuclear-stone-ifr-response/>
--0--
<http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/07/opinion/lyman-nuclear-pandora/index.html>
Scientist: Film hypes the promise of advanced nuclear technology
By Edwin Lyman, Special to CNN
November 7, 2013
Editor's note: Edwin Lyman, a physicist, is a senior scientist with
the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. For more of his
critique of Pandora's Promise, see his blog post, "Movie Review: Put
Pandora's Promise Back in the Box." For more on the future of nuclear
power as a possible solution for global climate change, watch CNN
Films' presentation of "Pandora's Promise," airing on CNN on
Thursday, November 7, at 9 p.m. ET/PT
(CNN) -- In his zeal to promote nuclear power, filmmaker Robert Stone
inserted numerous half-truths and less-than-half-truths in his new
documentary "Pandora's Promise," which CNN is airing on November 7.
One of Stone's more misleading allegations was that scientists at a
U.S. research facility, the Argonne National Laboratory, were on the
verge of developing a breakthrough technology that could solve
nuclear power's numerous problems when the Clinton administration and
its allies in Congress shut the program in 1994 for purely political
reasons.
Like the story of Pandora itself, the tale of the integral fast
reactor (IFR) -- or at least the version presented in the movie -- is
more myth than reality. In the final assessment, the concept's
drawbacks greatly outweighed its advantages. The government had sound
reasons to stanch the flow of taxpayer dollars to a costly, flawed
project that also was undermining U.S. efforts to reduce the risks of
nuclear terrorism and proliferation around the world.
Read what Robert Stone has to say
<http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/07/opinion/pandora-nuclear-stone-ifr-response/index.html>
In the film, scientists who worked on the IFR program unsurprisingly
sing its praises. For example, Charles Till, a former program
manager, claimed that the reactor "can't melt down" and would
therefore be immune to the type of catastrophes that occurred at
Three Mile Island in 1979 and Fukushima in 2011.
Others told Stone that the reactor, by "recycling" its own used, or
"spent," fuel, would conserve uranium resources and produce much less
nuclear waste than conventional reactors. But the reactor's advocates
didn't tell the whole story, and Stone did not include anyone in the
film who could have provided a more balanced and realistic assessment.
What did "Pandora's Promise" leave out? First, it does not clearly
explain what a "fast reactor" is and how it differs from the
water-cooled reactors in use today. Most operating reactors use a
type of fuel called "low-enriched" uranium, which cannot be used
directly to make a nuclear weapon and poses a low security risk. The
spent fuel from these water-cooled reactors contains weapon-usable
plutonium as a byproduct, but it is very hard to make into a bomb
because it is mixed with uranium and highly radioactive fission
products.
Fast reactors, on the other hand, are far more dangerous because they
typically require fuels made from plutonium or "highly enriched"
uranium that can be used to make nuclear weapons.
In fact, fast reactors can be operated as "breeders" that produce
more plutonium than they consume. To produce the large quantities of
plutonium needed to fuel fast reactors, spent fuel from conventional
reactors has to be reprocessed -- chemically processed to separate
plutonium from the other constituents. Facilities that produce
plutonium fuel must have strong protections against diversion and
theft. All too often, however, security at such facilities is
inadequate.
In the IFR concept, which was never actually realized in practice,
reactor-spent fuel would be reprocessed using a technology called
pyroprocessing, and the extracted plutonium would be fabricated into
new fuel. IFR advocates have long asserted that pyroprocessing is not
a proliferation risk because the plutonium it separates is not
completely purified.
But a 2008 U.S. Department of Energy review -- which confirmed many
previous studies -- concluded that pyroprocessing and similar
technologies would "greatly reduce barriers to theft, misuse or
further processing, even without separation of pure plutonium."
See the Department of Energy review here (PDF)
<http://nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/nnsa/inlinefiles/GNEP_NPIA.pdf>
Other Department of Energy studies showed that pyroprocessing, by
generating large quantities of low-level nuclear waste and
contaminated uranium, greatly increases the volume of nuclear waste
requiring disposal, contradicting "Pandora's Promise's" claim it
would reduce the amount of waste.
See Union of Concerned Scientists fact sheet (PDF)
<http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nwgs/reprocessing-and-nuclear.pdf>
And what about Till's claim that the IFR can't melt down? It's false.
"Pandora's Promise" referenced two successful safety tests conducted
in 1986 at a small demonstration fast reactor in Idaho called the
Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II). But EBR-II operators
scripted these tests to ensure the desired outcome, a luxury not
available in the real world. Meanwhile, the EBR-II's predecessor, the
EBR-I, had a partial fuel meltdown in 1955, and a similar reactor,
Fermi 1 near Detroit, had a partial fuel meltdown in 1966.
See U.S. Department of Energy information posted by the International
Atomic Energy Agency (PDF)
<http://www.iaea.org/INPRO/cooperation/Second_IAEA-GIF_WS_on_SFRs/presentations/T2-US-Wigeland-Stanculescu.pdf>
Moreover, fast reactors have inherent instabilities that make them
far more dangerous than light-water reactors under certain accident
conditions, conditions that were studiously avoided in the 1986
dog-and-pony show at EBR-II.
Perhaps the biggest myth in the film is the notion that all U.S.
research on fast reactors was terminated.
In fact, the IFR program's demise was a shutdown in name only. The
Department of Energy has continued to fund research and development
on fast reactor technology to the tune of tens of millions to
hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The IFR Fuel Reprocessing
Facility in Idaho shown in the film -- in reality, a plant called the
Fuel Conditioning Facility -- has been operating for decades,
essentially as a jobs program, to reprocess spent fuel from the
now-defunct EBR-II, despite the system's serious problems. In 2000,
the Department of Energy promised that all the fuel would be
processed by around 2007. Three years later, it delayed the projected
completion date to 2030.
Till's assertion in "Pandora's Promise" that "we know how to do these
things" does not square with the difficulties the Department of
Energy has encountered in trying to operate this troubled plant.
But if CNN viewers are persuaded by the "Pandora's Promise" IFR sales
pitch and think the federal government should throw even more good
taxpayer money after bad, I have two words of advice: Caveat emptor.
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