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...

Exelon chief John Rowe isn’t very worried about new regulations on the company’s nuclear energy facilities: "We're not in any panic at all," John Rowe, chairman and CEO of Chicago-based Exelon Corp. told investors on an earnings call. Well, why not? Rowe said the company's "worst fears" -- changes to the nuclear licensing process; mandates that would increase security personnel; or standards that would lower the amount of time spent nuclear fuel can be stored in cooling pools -- (all potential big ticket items for Exelon) so far haven't surfaced. "We don't at the moment see anything that has a major impact on the economics of these plants," he said. He’s referring to the findings and recommendations of the NRC’s 90-day review report of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. It’s still early in the process of learning all the lessons that the accident will teach, and Rowe doesn’t mention that the September 11, 2001 terrorist...

Stewart Brand has been the subject of multiple NNN blog posts over these last several weeks: his latest book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto , was reviewed and the kerfuffle between Amory Lovins and Brand has been discussed in multiple posts . Earlier this week, we had the opportunity to conduct an online Q&A with the author. The transcript is below. How's the book tour going? What's the public response been like at your readings? There's been good turnouts in the bookshops and vigorous signing[s]. What is the most commonly asked question at your book readings? The main hot button question is always nuclear. Usually in the form of "But what about...??" And then they bring up something I haven't discussed but is in the book, such as the widespread photographs of defective babies people are told were caused by Chernobyl. What are your (or your publisher's) expectations for book sales? (Somewhat related: any idea on how m...

This is the fourth and final post from us that looks critically at the bogus claims in Amory Lovins’ latest study. “Role of Government Myth” In his new book , Stewart Brand states (p. 84) : …Energy policy is a matter of such scale, scope, speed, and patient follow-through that only a government can embrace it all. You can’t get decent grid power without decent government power. In reply, Amory Lovins asserts (p. 19, pdf): …nuclear power requires governments to mandate that it be built at public expense and without effective public participation—excluding by fiat, or crowding out by political allocation of huge capital sums, the competitors that otherwise flourish in a free market and a free society. Lovins’ response contains a contradictory claim. Lovins accuses nuclear of not being able to survive in a “free market and a free society.” Yet, several pages later, Lovins touts how wind and solar are flourishing in China while being built by state-owned power companies according...

Continuing on Friday’s critique of Amory Lovins’ latest study , our following post delves into discussing if wind and solar are baseload technologies. Funny enough, Lovins’ rebuttal of this myth completely misinterpreted what Stewart Brand said about baseload in his nuclear chapter and apparently ended up agreeing with Brand in one case. The “baseload myth” Here’s the quote from Brand’s book that the Lovins study has a problem with (p. 80 and 81): “’Baseload,’” she [Gwyneth Cravens] explains in the book, “refers to the minimum amount of proven, consistent, around-the-clock, rain-or-shine power that utilities must supply to meet the demands of their millions of customers.” … Wind and solar, desirable as they are, aren’t part of baseload because they are intermittent—productive only when the wind blows or the sun shines. If some sort of massive energy storage is devised, then they can participate in baseload; without it, they remain supplemental, usually to gas-fired plants. This claim ...

Three weeks ago Mr. Amory Lovins released a very pointed critique of Stewart Brand’s chapter on nuclear in Brand’s new book, Whole Earth Discipline . After reading both Brand’s and Lovins’ pieces, I understood why Lovins was so critical of Brand. It was because Brand was quite critical of Lovins in his book (p. 99): In early 2009, in Ambio magazine, Amory Lovins declared: “Nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete.” How can someone [Lovins] so smart be so wrong about a subject he knows so well? [Emphasis added] Ouch. It’s now clear to us why Mr. Lovins came out with his critique of Brand when he did. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been able to digest Mr. Lovins’ latest claims in his new study (pdf) and have generated quite a few thoughts to share. In Lovins’ response to Brand’s chapter on nuclear, Lovins takes Brand to task on four issues he believes are myths about nuclear: baseloa...

Tom Ashbrook from NPR's OnPoint got the two to cordially hash out their opposing views on nuclear . Though the conversation lasted for about 12 minutes, not much was actually debated. I guess a good debate is what the blogosphere is for. So far I haven't seen much praise for Lovins' latest piece, in fact it looks like in the comments section at Grist, his supporters were rather thin. Rod Adams continues to take Lovins to town , Brian Wang at Next Big Future had a lot to critique and Sovietologist piped in . We, of course, are generating our thoughts but are waiting a bit to see how the debate plays out. It's been spectacular to see the nuclear industry's supporters expose and rip up the Rocky Mountain Institute's latest junk science.

At long last, Viking-Penguin releases tomorrow the much-anticipated Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by the celebrated author, environmentalist, Merry Prankster, finder and founder Stewart Brand . In his “New Nukes” chapter, he calls out to his old and new friends with clear advice: To my mind, the Green path forward begins with environmentalists realizing that nuclear power will grow no matter what we do. Our customary opposition would make it grow badly – slowly, expensively, unsystemically, and with dangerously poor overall coordination. But if we encourage it in the right way, nuclear energy growing well would mean that it minimizes humanity’s carbon-loading of the atmosphere; that it collaborates well with other carbon-free or superefficient energy forms; that it helps generate other Green services such as desalination or hydrogen . . . that it helps eliminate nuclear weapons; that it securely energizes cities and thereby helps to reduce world poverty . . . Am...

Ruth Sponsler has a review of Gwyneth Cravens' new book, The Power to Save the World . Be sure to give it a look. I'm sure many of you will recall that we first pointed out Cravens and her book in a post back in September , before also finding news of a presentation before Stewart Brand's Long Now Foundation .