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"  It takes Robert Stone&amp;#039;s controversial new documentary Pandora&amp;#039;s Promise 30 minutes and five apostate environmentalists, but it finally gets to the point: Nuclear power, the energy source many people fear most, is the best and currently only way to satisfy the world&amp;#039;s voracious demand for electricity without producing carbon dioxide and other emissions that contribute to climate change. Stone, perhaps best known for the Oscar-nominated anti-nuclear weapons documentary Radio Bikini (1987) and Earth Days (2009), about the rise of the modern environmental movement, paints himself as one of the converts. His film follows unlikely fellow travelers such as Stewart Brand (author of The Whole Earth Catalog) and Pulitzer Prize\u2013winner Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb). Once the scales had fallen from the eyes of these stalwart environmentalists, the film says, they realized that their movement was overselling some bunk and defending it with an uncritical zeal. The film cites three main examples. First, radically reduced consumption, as trumpeted by physicist Amory Lovins and other &amp;quot;negawatters,&amp;quot; cannot make a significant contribution to helping the developed world meet its energy demands, never mind the developing world. Second, renewable energy advocates are wildly unrealistic that a combination of solar-panel arrays, wind farms, tidal turbines, geothermal plants, and ethanol-producing cornfields can make a significant dent in the millions of tons of coal that the U.S. burns daily, almost all of it used to generate electricity. And third, Stone says, is that environmentalists have wildly exaggerated the dangers of nuclear power, especially when compared with the health and environmental damage inflicted by the production and consumption of fossil fuels. The reason, he argues: The baby boomers who came of age during the Cold War and founded the environmental movement equate nuclear power with nuclear weapons\u2014hence the intense anxiety about anything nuclear.      A surprising sequence in Pandora&amp;#039;s Promise puts the radiation risk in perspective. Stone tours major cities around the world as well as iconic disaster sites, stopping at each for a closeup of a handheld meter that shows millisieverts (mSv) per hour, a measure of background radiation. New York&amp;#039;s Central Park registers 0.13 mSv, and Rio de Janiero, 0.25. The cabin of an airliner at cruising altitude over the Pacific reads 2.20 mSv, because background radiation increases with altitude. And the reading outside a reactor at Chernobyl, less than three decades after the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history? Just 3.74 mSv. At one point, the film succumbs to the loose visual causality often depicted in documentaries: In a voice-over, one of the apostates discusses rapid climate change against a soundtrack of dramatic music, while a satellite image shows Superstorm Sandy wheeling up the East Coast. The guilt-by-association conclusion is that Sandy was the result of global warming. If so, Stone offers no proof\u2014nor can he. A single storm in a single season, even one that nearly hit a New York bull&amp;#039;s-eye, does not make the climate-change case. And a key topic that gets the once-over-lightly treatment: nuclear proliferation. Even though it takes complex and highly visible infrastructure to turn nuclear power plant fuel into weapons-grade material, it&amp;#039;s still an issue of concern to many nuclear opponents, and it&amp;#039;s odd that the film doesn&amp;#039;t address it in more depth. Mostly, though, the film sets aside the emotions of a highly charged debate and takes a clear-eyed look at the facts, with extensive use of graphs, animations, and specifics to reach its conclusion: All electrical power generation produces waste and comes at an environmental cost. But of the major sources of energy, nuclear power, especially from fourth-generation reactors that are far more efficient than the first-generation light-water reactors in use around the globe, makes the smallest impact on the environment. It may be an inconvenient truth, but it represents the hope that Pandora found at the bottom of the box. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a9083/pandoras-promise-when-greens-embrace-nuclear-15582425/>