Pandora’s Promise is an amazing documentary with an excellent technical bill that could be described quite simply as pro-nuclear, and exposes to the viewer to heavy doses of confusion and, why not say, propaganda, (even with that it’s still a great job). Maintained at all times within the limits of the excessive, gets raise serious doubts about the pros and cons of this form of power so feared by the general public and probably so unknown. It starts with the shocking proposal that a small cube of radioactive material can produce incredible amounts of energy.
The documentary, which was shown in the past Sundance Festival, begins by showing the testimony of American Ecologists recognized locally with career in anti-nuclear activist who openly declare themselves in favor of this misunderstood and mysterious form of energy. In its reasoning, always maintaining his absolute conviction in defense of middle-atmosphere conclude that this is the only power that can truly compete against fossil threatening while supplying a world suffers an increasing need for energy will likely double in the coming years.
Pandora’s Promise gets surprise and shudder us when goes with these witnesses to places like Fukushima or Chernobyl. These brave incursions are made with “Geiger counter” in hand, allowing us to compare directly the levels of residual radiation from these places marked by fate with many other parts of the world, filmed with the same pattern for more visual impact. Great sequence that shows that there is natural radiation everywhere, more at higher altitudes, and the levels do not seem to have an important relationship with sites affected by nuclear accidents like Chernobyl, 58 countries with nuclear reactors as France or natural beaches in Brazil. A simple but very striking exercise.
If a statement that makes this documentary proves absolutely certain is that there is a serious general ignorance about nuclear energy, real use, and even their potential dangers. Audience and documentary are discovering surprising facts together on this important issue. With the help of interesting archive images and computer simulations, Pandora’s Promise tries to explain that nuclear power and the atomic bomb are different things, still today the burning of coal not only produces practically all the energy we consume, but it is still the fastest growing despite being the most toxic; renewable energies depend on the gas to compensate for their lack of regularity, and many other amazing facts that seek to change the view that the public has about atomic energy.
The documental provides interesting interviews that show us scientists that when they began to develop this energy were just little more than environmental dreamers who augured that all would work today with this clean and “renewable” energy, and also shows us that behind the campaign of fear and the media rejection are the companies which are living on fossil fuels, and finally points out the American political class as the main cause of failure of nuclear energy.
We can believe what they say or not, but at least it worths spending time entertaining with Pandora’s Promise, a documentary, also interesting, is notably well made and fun just for the fact of selling an idea contrary to all established.