Promise of a Cleaner Future: Pandora’s Promise is a critically acclaimed documentary by Oscar Nominated Documentary Filmmaker Robert Stone. It premiered in Sundance Film Festival in January 2013, and also won the Sheffield Doc/Fest Green Award in June 2013.  It was acquired by CNN and broadcast on 7^th November 2013. It is currently available on YouTube and other streaming services like Netflix. The film tries to addresses the question of climate change from an unorthodox environmental position. Its core argument is that nuclear energy is a relatively safe, clean and a zero carbon emission energy source, and any solution for climate change without Nuclear energy would be too little too late. Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune calls the film "the most important movie about the environment since "An Inconvenient Truth."”

The film features environmentalists  Stewart Brand, Gwyneth Cravens, Mark Lynas, Richard Rhodes and Michael Shellenberger. Many of whom were once vocal opponents of nuclear energy, but now speak in favor of it based on evidence they have gathered. The film begins with anti-nuclear activists Helen Caldicott and Harvey Wasserman at a rally to against Indian Point Nuclear reactor in NY. Although Helen Caldicott is questioned, the film does not focus on the arguments of anti-nuclear activists. The Directors perspective is that he did not want to turn the documentary into a TV talk show debate.

The Film is set in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiishi Nuclear disaster, and follows Mark Lynas to Fukushima one year after the tsunami. The eerie emptiness of the surrounding areas is succinctly captured by the filmmakers, and also captures the moral trepidation of someone who was once very vocally anti-nuclear. The film then follows Mark Lynas to Chernobyl and across the globe measuring background radiation with a Geiger counter, in its effort to educate about “safe” levels of radiation.

All Nuclear power plant disasters have one thing in common, they have been caused by the failure of the cooling systems, hence a reactor failure is called a melt-down. The film travels to Argon National Laboratory in Idaho, USA where a new type of reactor was built in the 1980’s. This reactor was inherently safer and would shut itself down automatically in case of a cooling system failure.

The film also provides insight into the number of people killed in nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island vs. the number of people dying due to air pollution caused by Coal powered power plants. Three million people die worldwide due to small particulate pollution every year. Whereas according to world health organization, approximately 40 people who took part in cleaning the Chernobyl disaster site died, and four thousand more may have shortened lifespans due to cancer. There are no confirmed deaths in either the Fukushima Disaster or the Three Mile Island disaster. The difference is astronomical.

What is even more striking is the amount of Toxic waste produced during the manufacturing process of Solar Panels. And to add to that all renewable energy plants have to have natural gas as a backup, as Solar and wind can be highly unreliable when it comes to energy production. “When the power to one Hamburg aluminum factory failed recently, for only a fraction of a second, it shut down the plant, causing serious damage.” writes Christopher Booker in the The Telegraph.

Many critics have called Pandora’s Promise a propaganda film, the criticism is usually of the people involved and not the data provided. None have come forward with valid criticism of the arguments presented in this film. How does the world with an ever growing need for energy cut down carbon emissions? Can renewable energy sources like Solar and Wind meet the energy demands of an ever growing world population? How much energy does a planet of 7 billion people, fast approaching 10 billion, needs to sustain a modern way of life for all humans? 

An image of the earth from space in a scene from PANDORA'S PROMISE. Photo: Robert Stone

The only valid criticism of Nuclear Power Plants is that they are expensive to build, uneconomical to run and take very long to become operational. To put things in perspective, there are 300 million Indians who do not have access to electricity. Indian energy consumption is only 684 kWh per capita, compared to per capita energy consumption in the US- 13246 kWh, Australia – 10712 kWh, UK – 5472 kWh, China – 3298 kWh. As Mark Lynas writes in his article “The emergence from poverty of the developing world is non-negotiable.”  If India wishes to become like France which produces 75 percent of its electricity by Nuclear reactors, India will have to invest substantial resources towards indigenous nuclear reactor technology. Current Indian per capita electricity consumption is around 10% compared to the electricity consumption of the UK, less than 5% compared to that of US or Australia. If the Developed world wants India to use carbon neutral energy like Nuclear or Solar, they will have to provide India with subsidized technology.

India is at a crossroad today, to grow its economy India must produce reliable cost effective energy. India’s vast poor population needs access to cheap energy before it can hope to produce clean energy. While Climate Change is a real and an eminent problem, Bill Gates writes “we should not try to solve the problem on the backs of the poor”.

How India produces electricity required by its vast poor population can be debated, what is non-negotiable is the need to provide electricity to more than 300 million Indians who do not have access to electricity today. In order to achieve such a goal Indians need to embrace technology and science, and discard ideology. Electricity itself improves the quality of life wherever it becomes available, the better the living standards of a country the higher is its energy consumption. Higher standards of living in turn improve education, hygiene, and life expectancy.

All of the above arguments have been made in this Documentary, and hence it is a very important documentary for Indians to watch.  This writer hopes that readers will invest some time in reading more about nuclear and other forms of energy. A lot of data is available on Nuclear energy and the film on www.pandoraspromise.com

 By Aviral Kapoor