Film Pandora’s Promise – an infomercial for the nuclear lobby
Paper: CNN’s nuclear propaganda film “is dishonest to its core” — It’s “actually an infomercial” http://enenews.com/cnns-nuclear-propaganda-film-is-dishonest-to-its-core-pandoras-promise-is-actually-an-infomercial
Title: Pandora’s Promise: Would You Buy a Nuclear Reactor
Source: Seattle Weekly
Author: Brian Miller
Date: Jun 11 2013
My ears prick up whenever I hear how Bill Gates and Paul Allen are spending their money. Putatively a documentary about the resurgence of nuclear power, Pandora’s Promise is actually an infomercial for a business still stigmatized by Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and our fears of all things atomic. […]
[…] Pandora’s Promise, which was produced by CNN and Paul Allen’s Vulcan Productions. (Robert Stone is the director-for-hire.) […]
But the doc’s bigger flaw is that no one is allowed to make a reasoned anti-nuclear argument. […] And when I hear Pulitzer-winning author Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb) say that “to be anti-nuclear is fundamentally to be in favor of burning fossil fuels,” it sounds perfectly sensible. And that’s the problem with Pandora’s Promise: Though many of its claims may be truthful, the film is dishonest to its core.
See also: Experts: The planet can be powered solely by wind, water and solar energy (NO ‘fossil fuels’ or nuclear power)
UNSCEAR’s skewed message about Fukushima radiation
Fukushima and the nuclear industry’s fight against fear, Independent Australia, 12 June 13, Now that the Fukushima meltdown has faded from public consciousness, says Noel Wauchope, the nuclear industry is trying to persuade the world there is nothing to fear from fission.“…… how come that the World Nuclear Association and the media can be so confident that the main task now is to overturn that unwarranted fear?
They are relying largely on phone interviews with some members of The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) ― notably UNSCEAR chair, Wolfgang Weiss. On 31 May, UNSCEAR released ‒ not an extensive official report ‒ but a brief preliminary report on Fukushima radiation and health ― the full report will be presented at the United Nations in October this year. The world press has been quoting this statement from this unofficial UNSCEAR press release
‘It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public and the vast majority of workers.’ But the World Health Organisation’s comprehensive report (February 2013) concluded that an increased rate of breast cancer is to be expected in future years amongst women who were children when exposed to low level Fukushima radiation. It also predicted increased leukaemia amongst Fukushima clean-up workers.
If you dissect the UNSCEAR statement, you can see how very carefully it is worded so that it does not contradict the World Health Organisation. Continue reading
Latest UNSCEAR Fukushima report says opposite to World Health report
On May 31, 2013 the United Nations said it did not expect to see elevated rates of cancer from Fukushima, though it recommended continued monitoring <link> .
The report by the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation said prompt evacuation meant the dose inhaled by most people was low. But that assessment was at odds with a report by the World Health Organization in February that warned of an elevated cancer risk.
Life and Death Choices: Radiation, Children, and Japan’s Future, 04 June 2013 By David McNeill, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus | Report Like most fathers, Fujimoto Yoji frets about the health of his young children. In addition to normal parental concerns about the food they eat, the air they breathe and the environment they will inherit, however, he must add one more: the radioactive fallout from a major nuclear disaster.
Three days after meltdown began at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on 11 March, 2011, Fujimoto moved his two daughters, then aged four and three, to safety hundreds of kilometers away. In December, 2012 the eldest of the two was diagnosed with adenoidal cysts, the prelude to a type of cancer that often strikes the salivary glands. “I was told by the doctor that it’s very rare,” he says.
Although Mr Fujimoto and his family were in Chiba Prefecture, over 100km (60 miles) from the nuclear plant and in the opposite direction from the worst of the fallout, he believes his daughter inhaled enough radiation to cause her illness. “I’m convinced this is because of the Fukushima accident.” Continue reading
UNSCEAR the publicity arm of the nuclear lobby declares Fukushima radiation safe
Fukushima Radiation Risk Media Deception, Lynda Lovon Sassy musings on science, politics, and culture.3 June 13“……..Huffington post carried a Reuters story No Rise In Cancer Seen From Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, UN Says in which they quote a senior member of the committee, Dr.Wolfgang Weiss:
“Weiss, who chairs work on UNSCEAR’s Fukushima report, told reporters that dose levels were “so low that we don’t expect to see any increase in cancer in the future in the population”.”
But who is this Weiss Guy? Who is UNSCEAR and why should I believe what they report? UNSCEAR is subservient to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global pimp of nuclear power. UNSCEAR, which I like to pronounce “unscare” as it seems that their main purpose is to dispel any concerns about nuclear radiation, are not an autonomous independent agency. Not only is UNSCEAR loaded with scientists in the nuclear industry, every report must be approved by the IAEA. UNSCEAR was strongly criticized by the international scientific community a few years ago with its assessment of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident in which they claimed only 31 people died as a result of radiation. For more information on that coverup, read my blog about it here.
Who is this Weiss guy? Wolfgang Weiss is a boss on Euratom which, according to Wikipedia is an international organisation founded in 1958 with the purpose of creating a specialist market for nuclear power in Europe, developing nuclear energy and distributing it to its member states while selling the surplus to non-member states. Weiss is in the business of promoting nuclear power! Do you trust his opinion on the health effects or consequences of ionizing radiation and nuclear accidents?
More importantly, why didn’t Reuters or Huff Post point this out? They have access to google too. It is unethical and irresponsible for the media to not expose the bias and conflict of interest with these nuclear agencies and agents. It is irresponsible for the media to perpetuate the lie and illusion of neutrality of scientists. But it doesn’t end there……… http://lyndalovon.blogspot.de/2013/06/fukushima-radiation-risk-media-deception.html
Concerted media campaign fed by UNSCEAR, to deny Fukushima radiation risks –
Fukushima Radiation Risk Media Deception, Lynda Lovon Sassy musings on science, politics, and culture.3 June 13 Yet again, the nuclear power spin doctors are claiming that the only health risk from ionizing radiation is the stress caused by an irrational fear of the risk. Two scientific reports came out this week that predict no health risks or effects from the ionizing radiation released by the Fukushima nuclear accident and the corporate nuclear gangsters driving the media blitz bandwagon have been having a field day with it.
During a recent UN meeting on atomic radiation, UNSCEAR released a preliminary assessment of their research on the heath and cancer risk in Japan due to the Fukushima accident, and surprise, what they have found is that there is no risk. According to their press release
“Radiation exposure following the nuclear accident at Fukushima-Daiichi did not cause any immediate health effects. It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public and the vast majority of workers,” concluded the 60 th session of the Vienna-based United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effect of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR).
It didn’t take long for World Nuclear News, the megaphone of the nuclear biz to blitz the good news.
“The most extensive international report to date has concluded that the only observable health effects from the Fukushima accident stem from the stresses of evacuation and unwarranted fear of radiation.”….. .http://lyndalovon.blogspot.de/2013/06/fukushima-radiation-risk-media-deception.html
Nukespeak
Nuclear futures: how 20th century atomic science played on our hopes and fears, The Conversation, Jonathon Hogg, 23 May 13, Radioactivity is dramatic. You can’t smell it, taste it, or see it. You may be powerless to avoid it. Nuclear history is a story of dramatic contrasts, of hope and tragedy.
Nuclear states realised they had to educate and reassure their citizens. Those developing nuclear weapons invariably also developed civil defence programmes, leading to JFK’s letter to the American people in 1961, or Britain’s “Protect and Survive” in the 1980s.
These official nuclear narratives were not always trusted, and the rise of the anti-nuclear and environmental movements in the 1950s saw the emergence of increasingly articulate challenges to the government line….
Exposing the false claims of the nuclear lobby
PANDORA’S FALSE PROMISES BUSTING THE PRO-NUCLEAR PROPAGANDA A Beyond Nuclear Report ❒ (Download the full report here http://www.beyondnuclear.org/ ) TWO-PAGE SUMMARY, 18 May 13Nuclear junk science from James Hansen
James Hansen’s nuclear junk science http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/53989 May 4, 2013 By Jim Green Hansen has continued with his nuclear power advocacy, indeed he has become more strident.
James Hansen resigned from his position as director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in April to devote more time to campaigning to cut global carbon emissions.
In addition to his scientific research on climate change, Hansen has been arrested several times in recent years at protests against coal mining and tar sands mining.
Bravo James Hansen — precious few scientists and academics live and breathe their politics as he does.
But when it comes to proposing solutions, Hansen is on less solid ground. A loose parallel can be drawn with Tim Flannery, described by Clive Hamilton as a “talented science populariser” but a “policy flake”.
I met Hansen at an IQ2 debate in front of 1200 people at the Melbourne Town Hall in September 2010.
He was on the pro-nuclear side of the debate, I was on the other side. The audience was polled before and after the debate and many were deeply unimpressed by Hansen’s nuclear advocacy — 32% of the audience switched from pro-nuclear or undecided to anti-nuclear over the course of the debate, with the final poll showing 34% in favour of nuclear power, 58% against. Continue reading
How the American military-industrial-political racket works
“It’s what in Washington we call an iron triangle,” ” you have an alliance between the private sector, the defence contractors, the executive branch, in this case the Pentagon, and the legislative branch.”Everyone benefits from expensive procurement projects – the Pentagon gets weapons, defence companies get to make profits, and politicians get re-elected by funding armaments that generate jobs for constituents and campaign contributions from defence companies.
The result… is a defence budget “that is packed to the gills with weapons we don’t need, with weapons that are underestimated in their future costs”.
America’s War Games How the Obama administration is redefining the US military’s strategic priorities with far-reaching consequences, Aljazeera, 27 April 13 The United States’ military expenditures today account for about 40 percent of the world total. In 2012, the US spent some $682bn on its military – an amount more than what was spent by the next 13 countries combined.
Now that the war in Iraq is over and the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan will be complete in 2014, the stage might therefore appear to be set for a decrease in US defence spending. Even in Washington DC, many have argued that the defence budget can be cut substantially and the resulting “peace dividend” could be diverted to more pressing domestic concerns, such as dealing with the nation’s continuing economic problems.However, a battle to ward off cuts to the Pentagon’s budget has begun and the way things are going, it seems likely that the US will have the smallest drawdown or reduction of the military budget after a period of conflict since World War II – in comparative terms, smaller than after Vietnam, Korea and the end of the Cold War. Continue reading
Front Groups do the Dirty Work for Oil and Gas Industry
The Oil And Gas Industry’s Assault On Renewable Energy, Environmental Defense Fund Jim Marston April 26, 2013 “………So far, 29 states have implemented Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) programs that require increased production of energy from renewable sources such as solar, wind, geothermal and biomass. They’ve been adopted in red states and blue – from California to Texas to Maine – through democratic processes and with popular support. RPS programs have helped jumpstart an industry that is spurring economic development, creating American jobs, boosting energy independence and cutting our carbon footprint.
A Bloomberg article released Tuesday details how the oil and gas industry, through some self-described free market organizations that they fund, are trying to engineer a legislative massacre of these policies in more than a dozen states.
The groups may sound familiar: American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is currently pushing legislation around the country that would mandate the teaching of climate change denial in public school systems, and The Heartland Institute, which ran a billboard campaignlast year comparing global warming “admitters” to Osama bin Laden and Charles Manson. Both have long opposed sensible energy policies. And their funders will sound familiar, too: the oil, gas and coal industries and their owners like the Koch Brothers.
With this new campaign, though, they are not influencing legislation to fill young minds with false propaganda or attacking climate legislation. They’re attacking renewable energy. Why? Apparently, an industry that the naysayers loved to call a loser is now threatening fossil fuel profits….. http://www.edf.org/blog/2013/04/26/oil-and-gas-industry%E2%80%99s-assault-renewable-energy
Nuclear Lobby’s big lie about “radiophobia”
“Fear of a Contaminated Homeland” becomes “Radio Phobia” http://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/fear-of-a-contaminated-homeland-becomes-radio-phobia/ 23 April 13,
Translation: The witnesses to the world’s nuclear disasters, living in the affected lands, have a rational and experiential basis for fearing and not wanting the radiological contamination their homelands suffer.
This accurate awareness, experience and opinion is translated by nuclear industry and its authorities as an illness caused bygroundless fear. Love of health and homeland, the basis of the perception of homeland degradation, becomes not a sign of mourning for one’s nation, people and self, but a sign of weakness within the narrative of the nuclear industry. Hence “Radiophobia” as a term of abuse by nuclear authorities. These persons and organisations who claim authority to dictate safety in an attempt to shut up the patriots of the contaminated lands.
No farmer would want to plough cesium laced land, no consumer would want to eat the resulting food. Contaminated homelands mean no or little choice. The devaluing of the wants and needs of people lie at the basis of the nuclear industry narrative. The alleged imperative of nuclear industry demonstrates, by its defensive reactions, the priority of its own needs – to continue – over the valid needs of lands and populations who once hosted the industry.
The use of the term reveals more about nuclear authorities than it does about their victims.
It is self evident that nuclear authorities act to minimize the perception of contaminated homelands.
This is not homeland security; it is a manipulative lie.
Fewer and fewer people are able to believe the lie without dissonance.
The entire dynamic is not new. It has been repeated for decades.
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/601630/n/Fukushima-Now
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/601626/n/Pacific-Fallout
Thorium – an irrelevant distraction from the gloomy facts about nuclear power
— time. It is going to take many decades to get the thorium fuel cycle happening. The global nuclear industry has the twin goals of prolonging the life of currently operating nuclear reactors, and of building new ones. Their rationale for this is often that, eventually, the energy solution will be nuclear fusion. So in the meantime, the world needs nuclear power — or so they argue.
The thorium advocates usually promote thorium reactors as a solution to both climate change and energy needs. But in reality, thorium nuclear energy is irrelevant to both.
Again, the first reason is time. Although there are current designs that could be established in 10 to 15 years, the most favoured design – the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) – is estimated to have, for a significant deployment, a lead time of 40 to 70 years.
Don’t believe thorium nuclear reactor hype, Independent Austtralia 28 Jan 13, Thorium reactors are the latest big thing in nuclear spin. Noel Wauchope says: don’t believe the hype.
The explanation becomes clearer, when you consider that the nuclear industry has sunk $billions into new (uranium or plutonium fuelled) large nuclear technologies, as well as into lobbying governments and media. Would big corporations like Hitachi, EDF Westinghouse, Toshiba, Areva, Rosatom be willing, or indeed able, to withdraw from the giant international operations that they already have underway? Would they, could they, tolerate a mass uptake of the new thorium nuclear reactors — which is what would be needed, to make the thorium market economical?…. Continue reading
America’s big con job – the Nuclear “Waste Confidence Rule”
The only reasonable and logical solution is to stop making more. But this “Waste Confidence” decision isn’t based on reason or logic. It’s based on keeping the reactors OPERATING for the next hundred years.
So why are we burdening our future generations with an ever-growing, unsolvable problem?
The Eternal Problem – Nuclear Waste Confidence, Counter Punch by RUSSELL D. HOFFMAN, JANUARY 03, 2013“………The pro-nuker preferred to call it “spent fuel confidence.” I, on the other hand, didn’t like the word “confidence” since there’s nothing that warrants ANY confidence in this discussion, whatsoever. ”Waste Failure” would be more appropriate. Or “Waste Impasse” might be even better. Or better yet: ”The Intractable, Unsolvable, Filthy, Disgusting Mess We’ve Made” but I guess that would just be too accurate to a group where a “rapid disassembly” is the term for a core explosion that spews radioactive crud for miles around.
But one way or another, it’s obvious that “Waste Confidence” is a misnomer from start to finish…… …… Nuclear waste storage is a huge unsolved problem in every nuclear country. Continue reading
Lynas rare earths company aims to discredit National Toxic Network (NTN)
Lynas’ waste plans a toxic pipe dream Aliran, 19 December 2012 Scientists and community leaders are concerned about radioactive waste from Lynas’ Malaysian plant but the company representative who took Wendy Bacon’s questions brushed off the criticism. “……Discrediting sources is a familiar public relations tactic used by companies to protect themselves against journalists relying on their critics as sources. So NM asked if the company had prepared a response to the NTN report. The spokesperson said it had but it was “unfortunately contained material before a [Malaysian] court and I can’t share that with you”.
The NTN report deals with Lamp waste steams which include non radioactive fluoride, dust particulates, gas, acidic waste water as well as more than 22000 tonnes of low level Water Leach Purification (WLP) radioactive waste which a year. The most critical issue is the control and disposal of the WLP wastes — which for radioactive material may mean for many hundreds of years.
On the basis of specific criticisms, NTN has two main recommendations. First, that the temporary licence issued by the AELB should be revoked until the issue of long term waste disposal is resolved and second, that the plant should not be allowed to operate until the release of millions of litres of effluent into the Balok River that runs past the site has been “further modelled and assessed”.
“The lack of data on these issues (the impact on the river) means the Lynas EIA is well below international standards and insufficient for granting of operational licences,” theNTN says; the Lamp temporary licence would never have been granted in Australia…….http://aliran.com/11018.html
Exelon a powerful nuclear bully against the public interest
Nuclear Giant Exelon Back to Bullying Wind Energy, The Green Miles, by Miles Grant, 3 Dec 12 Nuclear power giant Exelon is once again complaining that wind power makes electricity prices too low. On page 21 of Exelon’s new report slamming government support for wind energy:
[S]ubsidized wind generation also exacerbates artificially low electric prices, thus imposing economic harm.
on competitive generators that are needed to maintain system reliability.
Aw, poor little Exelon! Considering the company brought in $19 billion in revenue last year while dumping vast amounts of carbon pollution into the air at no charge, I bet that cheap wind power had Exelon executives crying in their Johnnie Walker Blue.
Exelon isn’t poor or little – it’s a big, powerful bully that has no problem putting its best interests ahead of your family’s best interests. Exelon spent $9.2 million on lobbying last year, just one of many electric utilities fighting to protect our dirty, expensive energy status quo. The entire alternative energy industry – from wind to solar to biofuels – spent $28.6 million. Continue reading
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