Pandora's Promise Aired Last Night on CNN

Well Dale Bryk for one, seems to have no concept of the numbers involved....but I would say anybody who did could hardly take her position.....Ralph Nader seems not to have done any research on this subject for the last several years.....Michael Shellenberger seems to be the most informed and well researched of all, he's well spoken and clear in his thoughts....

What is this about? (can't watch video right now)

Drew K

It's about environmentalists who were against nuclear power their whole lives, and now have educated themselves as to the facts, and are now pro-nuclear.....This film tells the stories of their journey to enlightenment, and research into the realities of energy production....

So, are they trying to sell the world on Nuclear? I can't say that I am opposed to that. I did read an article that spoke of cleaning nuclear waste of the byproducts so that you can use it longer.

Drew K

Well I don't think they are actually trying to sell anything, but rather offer the solution to clean energy production, reducing co2 emissions to mitigate the effects of global warming.....A lot of people are unaware of just how dirty and dangerous coal is....and anyone that thinks that solar and wind are viable as a large baseload energy supply source, is mistaken,,,at least with the state of the art methods now available....A serious look at developing countries and population growth together with the knowledge that the quality of life closely follows individual consumption of energy units, highlights the need for clean energy production on a large scale if co2 production is to be controlled.....The dangers of nuclear production of energy have been exaggerated for no other reason than hysterics generated by Hollywood and the few that equate nuclear energy with nuclear bombs....in the meantime coal has been quietly killing 100's of thousands and poisoning the environment, and releasing co2 in the millions of tons....What will be the true cost of burning hydrocarbons for energy....?,, only time will tell.....

Coal is not as bad as you seem to think. The problem is the way it is used. In London when coal was the primary heating fuel it was bad and very damaging to the environment. But in a modern power plant where the coal is crushed and ground to the consistency of coffee grounds and injected into the furnace then the exhaust is scrubbed in a bag house so the fly ash is recovered it is not nearly so bad.

The nice thing about modern coal plants is you can modify them to burn biomas also.

The worst thing I see going on is some places, like the U.S. are exporting high sulfer coal because they can't burn it cheaply enough themselves. So they export it to Mexico, China and other places with less restrictive emission policies. So basically they are exporting their pollution! How can that be enviornmentally responsible!

Drew K

Coal is not as bad as you seem to think.

Maybe it's worse than you think. Did you know that it also liberates several tons of uranium and thorium per year per MWe? This is let to scatter in the wind.

How much radioactive material falls to the earth every day?

Would you give up the electricity we use today? It cannot be replaced with any renewable source, and never will be. Demand will continue to rise until the population begins to level off then with hope, efficiency will also continue to improve and demand will eventually drop...or we will run out of fossile fuels and supply will drop.

Even if we come up with an 'unlimited' cheap energy supply we will use it without limit.

Drew K

How much radioactive material falls to the earth every day?

In order to reply, I had to look up the amounts instead of the "weasel words" I used before. I also discovered that my previous was defective; it is not per MWe, but per 1000 MWe. Every year 5 tons of uranium and 7 tons of thorium come out of coal burning plants per 1000 MWe. I don't know how many plants there are in the world, but I would estimate the most of them are over 1000 MWe, and that there are umpteen of them. Still nebulous on the number of plants, but imagine the U and Th that are emitted to scatter in the wind, and then fall on the earth.

The energy demand in the world will continue to increase; and the the energy supply, due to running out of fossile fuel, will drop. It is a mathematical certainty that eventually these two graphs will cross. At that time we will have to go to nuclear and/or reduce our standard of living.

I suggest fast nuclear, particularly the IFR, because it is so much better than thermal nuclear. And also that we begin now rather than waiting for the crisis.

But you neglect to account for the human element. As a society, change will not occur until there is a crisis. Sure, it would be smart to begin now, but you know as well as I do that the majority will not do anything until it affects them presonally.

I love the idea of living off the grid, would love to find a nice location where I can use a stream or tide, or hot spring to generate for my home but I know that until then I will live with my creature comforts, air conditioning and garage door opener and use energy like there is no tomorrow...just like the rest of the world.

Drew K

True. The fast nuclear reactor can utilize the used fuel ("waste") from thermal reactors. It can also use nuclear warheads & bombs as fuel. Also thorium can be used.

My take is that with actual understanding of subject material results in actual understanding and good decisions result. There is still a lot of bad information out there. I didn't like sitting and listening to people who were idiots the first time around explaining why they were idiots in a way that still made the people with real information at fault.

There are people who are incapable of understanding basic concepts.

There are people who simply don't care to understand

There are people who profit from the educational neglect of the population

As long as people are popular and their logic is sound to other uneducated people...they get their message heard, garner support, and make money.

Bandwagons are popular because the tune is popular.

Didn't; don't need to.

Always been OK with nuclear.

Nuclear is fine with me too.

The only thing I learned from that, right at the beginning, was that the US was buying former soviet warheads to use as fuel. Excellent reuse. Beyond that the interview just sounded like blah blah blah, whine whine whine, boo hoo hoo.

I just wish they would get on the thorium bandwagon and off the uranium source. From all that I have read it will negate a very high percentage of present problems. Also if they had gone the CANDU heavy water system the disasters would not have either been possible or greatly reduced. Chernobyl , Three Island, Fukushima et, al. I am not a nuclear physicist but I have worked in these plants.

The Guardian's website blog has around 90+ comments on the show.

Other than CNN's ratings making a dive, the battle arguments seem to be along the regular lines.

I am somewhat surprised with the world population moving from the 7 Billions to the 9 Billions, and the apparent claim that our third rock from the sun is going to use, not a marginal increase in energy, but rather some multiples more in consumption. Where is the drive to be more efficient? Why must the world consume more energy per head than it has ever done? Where is the marco energy audit including possible future demand and why/how it might be reduced? What would happen to the whole energy balance if we say travelled 20% slower, consumed slow local seasonal food (vs fast food), and went to bed earlier. (In some countries, they run 24 hour TV to distract the population from adding to the census numbers ... watch your small LED TV in bed instead of the big set in the home entertainment area).

I find it surprising that in Australia, when local oranges are out of season, there are Californian oranges on the shelves. Why can we not vary our diets until the locally grown oranges are ready to be picked on the trees just a few miles away. The energy consumed to put the Californian oranges on the shelves of my home town, maybe 15,000 miles away from the USA orchards, is just plain dumb when it comes to energy efficiency.

If we engineers look at the bigger picture, I am sure that a more sustainable energy model could be developed. As for Gen IV and thorium reactors being part of the energy source mix, let's see if they are needed.

I wanted to watch it, but don't get CNN. Does anybody have an alternate until they put out a DVD?

I've long been an advocate for nuclear power but there is still the problem of nuclear waste disposal that needs to be addressed. I did not view the movie but I did see the quick preview link that SolarEagle provided. I still believe that spent fuel rods should be considered a yet to be realized resource instead of a hazardous waste for millennia.

I've long been an advocate for nuclear power but there is still the problem of nuclear waste disposal that needs to be addressed. . . . I still believe that spent fuel rods should be considered a yet to be realized resource instead of a hazardous waste for millennia.

The problem of waste disposal will be much smaller with the fast reactor, especially the IFR which seems to me to be the best of them. It will use as fuel much of the waste that is produced by the thermal reactors. After reprocessing, the same fuel can continue to produce energy for us. Reprocessing during this additional running time can be done on-site, eliminating transportation worries. The waste volume is reduced because it is "burned" to produce energy. The waste radioactivity is reduced because the actinides that are produced in the fuel are also burned;these are the elements that produce the intense and long-lived radioactivity that requires the extremely long storage times.

Thus, the spent fuel rods are to be used, not disposed of or stored.

I agree that the whole nuc issue from mining the stuff to processing the waste has not got the best of PR spin.

But I go back to the whole energy consumption question. Above me as I write this, the 60watt incandescent has been replaced by the 6watt LED. It runs cooler. Uses only 1/10th of the energy. The LED life is estimated to be x10 longer. Not sure about the embedded energy difference in the manufacturing.

Let's not necessarily build more electrical energy generation capacity from whatever means, at mega centralised plants, but rather consider what/when/where/why the energy is needed .... and then look at the how.

Conservation should be done, without a doubt. I believe though that most electric power by far goes into moving things like water, coolants, air, people and other masses. So focusing on the significant improvements in lighting efficiency will mislead how much power can be conserved.

I realise that energy saving with lighting etc is 'small change'.

My point in post #10 was related to a change of thinking when it comes to energy consumption. Why move fruit around the world when a change of diet could substantially reduce the energy use.

Moving food around the world provides a diverse diet and frequently a better return for the farmer. Politically it also makes more of the world a community instead of just local tribes.

As any good chef knows, local fresh produce is frequently tastier. However, modern life is far from the agrarian society of our past.

Our energy use is a complicated matter. Conservation of energy is good but can only go so far. Our fossil fuel supply of energy has limitations. The critical limitation in fossil fuel now seems to be the effects from waste products and not the finite supply. We need to explore all energy avenues.

This article popped up on the news reel today. It talks about thorium generators and some other generation methods.

I don't know how I feel about using an orbital solar platform, aside from the safety ramifications of beaming energy through the air there is the thought of do we really need to warm up the earth with importing more energy from the sun?

I guess it doesn't matter if it is nuclear or extra solar the waste heat will be released into the environment (not that I am on the global warming bandwagon...yet).

Drew k

Well I finally got to watch this film and I must say it is the best documentary of the year as far as I'm concerned. It is about time that it is realized we will never fill the fossil fuel gap with solar and wind.