Pandora’s Promise is a documentary movie about nuclear energy that claims to change the way one thinks fundamentally.

Featured as speakers in the movie are notable individuals (Stewart Brand, Gwyneth Cravens, Mark Lynas, Richard Rhodes, and Michael Shellenberger), who once were fierce anti-nuclear proponents, but now in the light of new facts and studies, they say that they have changed their minds in favor of nuclear energy usage. They argue that in the era of global warming, nuclear energy may be one of the only clean energy solutions available to us.

The movie discusses the history of nuclear energy and its usage along with the common misconceptions about it. Earlier in the 20^th century, the nuclear energy was known only for its potential to devastate. The movie briefly touches upon the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing tragedy and the nuclear weapons development.  Yet the main focus of the film is still the peaceful ways in which the nuclear energy can be used. The nuclear reactors and their mechanisms are then discussed. The Three Mile Island accident, Chernobyl disaster, and more recent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are brought to light to show how dangerous the nuclear energy can still be even with all the precautions, standards, and safety rules used in the production of nuclear reactors. The positive example of France is then provided to counter-balance the history of accidents. France, which heavily relies on nuclear energy plants, never had any serious accidents or nuclear disasters.

The nuclear energy is compared to Pandora’s Box (Greek Legend), which spread a lot of evils into the world, but as the movie correctly mentions: “At the bottom of the box she found hope.” This is an effective allegory, whose primary meaning is that although the nuclear energy has caused a lot of troubles and disasters, we have no alternatives to it right now in terms of its cleanliness and powerfulness when it comes to energy production.

Critique of the movie may include the facts that in its discussion of nuclear energy, it omits the means by which uranium, the fuel for the nuclear reactors, is extracted and the problems with the utilization of nuclear waste. Also, the movie experts seem to overexaggerate the cheapness of nuclear energy as the construction and proper service of nuclear plants may be extremely costly.