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“Pandora’s Promise” deadly wrong conclusion in this nuclear advertising film

Despite the unknowns, Pandora wants a massive turn to new types of nuclear power plants. The world’s power plants currently produce about 5,000 gigawatts (1 gigawatt = 1 billion watts). Replacing this fleet with new plants of 1 gigawatt each — the common commercial size — means building 5,000 new nuclear plants, over 10 times the current number. Existing experience indicates that $6 billion may be a lower cost estimate to build such plants, so the total cost would be about $30 trillion, possibly higher.

Is such a sum even conceivable? Maybe yes, but would such a massive program be the best use of $30 trillion? At the same time, Pandorafails to seriously address the promises and challenges of developing major roles for renewable energy.

“Pandora’s Promise” and “Switch” raise the right issues but get nuclear wrong, Grist, By John Perkins, 6 July 13Two recent movies, Pandora’s Promise and Switch, promote massive changes in the U.S. energy economy; both embrace nuclear power and point to France as the nuclear success story. The two-part company, however, on natural gas: Switch sees gas plus nuclear as the major energy sources of the future, but Pandora gives gas no significant role.

These are “good-bad” movies. They effectively raise the right issues but crash on flawed conclusions. Pandora correctly places energy at the heart of the most important environmental issue: climate change…..

Make no mistake about it: These films engage and persuade. That’s precisely why the nonsense of their conclusions is so deadly……

Pandora’s failure lies in its startlingly simplistic proposal to replace fossil fuels with nuclear power. For example, the film claims that the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) provides a key route to safe nuclear power. These facts, however, are important: 1) The IFR’s prototype, the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II, was small-scale when the program ended; and 2) No IFR plant was ever built. Accordingly, data on reliability, safety, and costs don’t exist. Nuclear power has a long history of bedevilment in scaling up from prototypes, and Pandora’s reliance on untested technology invites disbelief.

Despite the unknowns, Pandora wants a massive turn to new types of nuclear power plants. The world’s power plants currently produce about 5,000 gigawatts (1 gigawatt = 1 billion watts). Replacing this fleet with new plants of 1 gigawatt each — the common commercial size — means building 5,000 new nuclear plants, over 10 times the current number. Existing experience indicates that $6 billion may be a lower cost estimate to build such plants, so the total cost would be about $30 trillion, possibly higher.

Is such a sum even conceivable? Maybe yes, but would such a massive program be the best use of $30 trillion? At the same time, Pandorafails to seriously address the promises and challenges of developing major roles for renewable energy. Such a partial assessment doesn’t cut it for spending $30 trillion…….

Both Pandora and Switch seductively engage and persuade. Yet they are both fatally flawed. Both dismiss a serious engagement with renewable energy without a persuasive engineering or scientific analysis. Both slide too facilely into highly risky technologies (nuclear and gas), dismiss the risks, fail to discuss costs, and offer no analysis of opportunity costs (what other things could we do with the money?). Both rely on a breathtakingly narrow spectrum of opinion about energy and leave other equally qualified experts by the wayside.

Both Pandora and Switch end up as biased and not objective, despite their strenuous assertions to the contrary. The “good-good” film on energy remains to be made. http://grist.org/climate-energy/pandoras-promise-and-switch-raise-the-right-issues-but-get-nuclear-wrong/

July 6, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Resources -audiovicual