NEI Nuclear Notes

Updated Editor's Note: The next big date on the Pandora's Promise calendar is November 7 at 9:00 p.m. U.S. EST. That's when the film will make it's cable television debut on CNN . A crew from the cable network visited NEI a few weeks ago, and we anticipate that you'll see a number of features about the future of the nuclear energy industry air over the next several weeks. Be sure to watch on November 7, and join us on Twitter as we participate in a real-time chat about the film using the #PandorasPromise hash tag. Editor's Note: Here at NEI, we're keeping a close eye on  Pandora's Promise , a documentary film by Academy Award-nominated director Robert Stone about how many prominent environmentalists have changed their minds about nuclear energy because of concerns about climate change.  The film was produced independently from the nuclear industry. Among the financial backers of Pandora's Promise are Richard Branson and Microsoft co-founder Paul A...

Note: Be sure to look at all of Nuclear Notes’ coverage of this important movie, most notably Eric’s review below. Should you trust a “review” of Pandora’s Promise , Robert Stone’s new movie on nuclear energy, from this particular site? Well, that’s up to you to decide. If I thought the movie terrible as a film going experience, there would still be a lot to say about it – and I wouldn’t want people who have waited a long time for a pro-nuclear movie to avoid it on my account unless it was a briar patch of lies. But Pandora’s Promise is good. It’s skillfully made, accessible to an interested general audience (in both style and content – this isn’t a dry dissertation) and it maintains a simple interview approach – shots are composed but the compositions are largely determined by the subjects – it isn’t as tightly controlled as an Errol Morris special. And it allows a more complex point-of-view than is usual for a subject vulnerable to blunt polemics – for example, it ...

Robert Stone behind the camera. It was back in 2006 that NEI Nuclear Notes published its first post with the title, " Another Environmentalist for Nuclear Energy ." At the time, I could certainly have understood how a statement like that might seem more than a bit unbelievable. Environmentalists? Supporting? Nuclear? Energy? Wasn't the environmental community unanimously opposed to nuclear energy?  But what I had begun to see at the time was a growing understanding on the part of a number of thoughtful people about the size and scope of the challenge before mankind. How do you support a world with a growing population that aspires to enjoy the same standard of living that we've grown accustomed to in the developed world? And how do you do it without causing catastrophic damage to the planet? It's was that conundrum that led environmentalists like Patrick Moore , James Lovelock and the late Rev. Hugh Montefiore to reconsider their position on nuclear ene...

This evening in Pleasantville, NY at the Jacob Burns Film Center , Robert Stone's new documentary, Pandora's Promise , will have its New York premiere. Following the screening, Stone will have a discussion with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of Riverkeeper about the film. The discussion will be moderated by Andrew Revkin of the New York Times . NEI will be in attendance, and we'll be following the discussion live via our Twitter feed, @n_e_i . Please check in around 9:00 p.m. U.S. EDT for our live coverage. So Where Can You See Pandora's Promise ? The official opening will be in New York City on June 12 at  Sunshine Cinema  on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Two days later, on June 14, the film will open in an additional 15 cities nationwide ( Atlanta ,  Berkeley ,  Boston ,  Chicago ,  Denver ,  Houston ,  Irvine ,  Los Angeles ,  Minneapolis ,  Philadelphia ,  San Diego ,  San Francisco ,  Seattle ,  St. Lou...

Mark Tercek Earlier this month, UK-based environmental activist Mark Lynas kicked off something of a firestorm when he gave a speech where he apologized for his previous opposition to genetically-modified foods (GMO). It isn't his first high-profile conversion, as I'm sure many of our readers recall how Lynas changed his mind about nuclear energy . While NEI obviously doesn't have a position on the GMO issue, we couldn't help but notice that the row stoked by the Lynas speech helped elicit a very level-headed blog post from Nature Conservancy President and CEO Mark Tercek calling for civility and rationality in environmental debates. You can find the post at the Nature Conservancy's blog,  Cool Green Science : Since I have become CEO of The Nature Conservancy I have learned that it is our passion and the passion of our supporters that make us effective. But sometimes that passion can be our undoing. So many of us, and others who are not associated with ...

I got a surprise this morning as I opened my email: the news that the U.K. affiliate of Friends of the Earth (FOE), one of the world's leading environmental organizations, may drop its long-time opposition to the use of nuclear energy. The word comes from author, journalist and climate activist Mark Lynas , who recently had a phone conversation with Mike Childs , the head of climate change with the organization. Apparently, the organization is about to do an extensive scientific review of the positions for and against nuclear energy. Here's Childs from the interview: [S]o we’ve commissioned the Tyndall Centre in Manchester to lead the review. They’ll go through a process of pulling together the arguments for and against nuclear power, both new nuclear power stations, extending existing stations, and some of the fast breeder ideas on the table. They’ll synthesise that and do a peer-review with proponents both for and against, to see whether they’ve got those arguments properl...

First it was Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore seeing the light about the benefits of nuclear power , now another former director of the international environmental organization has become a convert. In an exclusive interview with The Independent , Stephen Tindale , Executive Director of Greeenpeace UK from 2001-2007 , describes his road to Calvary Damascus. “My change of mind wasn’t sudden, but gradual over the past four years. But the key moment when I thought that we needed to be extremely serious was when it was reported that the permafrost in Siberia was melting massively, giving up methane, which is a very serious problem for the world,” he [Tindale] said. “It was kind of like a religious conversion. Being anti-nuclear was an essential part of being an environmentalist for a long time but now that I’m talking to a number of environmentalists about this, it’s actually quite widespread this view that nuclear power is not ideal but it’s better than climate change,” he added. Fo...