MovieChat Forums > Pandora's Promise (2013) Discussion > The fire you can't put out.

The fire you can't put out.

posted 10 years ago by Rob-O-Cop
19 replies | jump to latest

With all this doco's talk of fail-safe safety plants and the impossibility of an accident (ignoring the fact that we just had a major accident in 2011 and we can't solve it).
I'm actually pro the idea of nuclear power, it makes sense, but what doesn't make sense is attempting to utilise it before we know how to control it properly, and no amount of smiling hipster intellects assuring us of that is going to make any difference until we figure out how to put the fire out if we need to.
Fukushima melted down, 3 years later they still don't know how to deal with the problem yet here we are watching a doco that assures us everything is alright, it's all under control.
It isn't, which doesn't mean it can't be, but the scientists have to get back into the lab and figure out how to address this key major flaw before we can all get on with a life of luxurious cheap power.
You won't find that addressed in this doco.

[–] Iwatchsomuchtv 10 years ago

ROB-O-COP,
Believe me I understand your concern, I've read people here talking about Chernobyl and Fukushima (could be misspelled, I'm writing from my phone and don't want to check it out) and people always forget this reactors have old technology. It's easily understandable that in 30 year things have changed a lot, look the aerospace industry, the aviation industry, even the telecommunications industry. The documentary points you directly to the possibility of newer reactors and designs that are safe in case of catastrophic emergencies. Besides, in the documentary they just want to begin a discussion, already knowing that we need to get rid of fossil fuels in the next 50 years, and that a mixture of nuclear, solar and wind energies would be the best answer, which is logical once you understand that technology nowadays is better. I live in a country where the government in the past have made the bet for solar and wind energy, and now they are translating the debt of the industry to the people, so the bill have almost doubled which of course I don't like. I think this two kinds of energy are very limited and very expensive. Look at France and Sweden.

[–] Rob-O-Cop 10 years ago

Thanks for an understanding response.
Yes, old technology, and circumstances not planned for. I live near Fukushima. You're quite correct, we do have to make a change in power, and I've nothing against Nuclear in theory, but this movie came across as pro propaganda. The stuff we were hearing to push the pro nuclear power stuff before fukushima, (the disaster that couldn't happen) happened. Understandably there's a lack of trust of the "it's fail safe now" camp. It was fail safe, until it failed.
But maybe you're right, maybe we need to take a risk to address the issues we have to face in delivering power, but lets at least stop pretending there isn't a risk, and that it is fail safe. It'll be fail safe when we have the understanding of how to put the fire out, not just how to start it.

[–] bruce-129 10 years ago

I agree with most of what you said ... I've been thinking the same thing .... nuclear probably is the only safe clean fuel ... if there are no mistakes with it ... but there are many things problematic ... it is centralized and to date we have shown we do not know now to manage nuclear power safely. That's just the facts.

[–] perl_phreak 10 years ago

I just read a reasoned and rational discussion about an emotionally-charged issue. On the Internet. Between that and the documentary I just watched, I don't know what to believe anymore!

Thanks to both of you.

[–] melinda2001 10 years ago

Don't let anyone tell you what to believe. Teach yourself, ask questions, get information from a variety of sources, and make up your own mind.

[–] bruce-129 10 years ago

There simple are no good sources for information anymore. I think that is one of the first steps before we as a species make decisions like this ... first we have to invent a system that distributes valid fact-based information and teach people who to process it themselves and ask good questions.

[–] melinda2001 10 years ago

I don't believe there are no good sources of information today. In fact I believe there has never been easier access to good information, and that it keeps getting better. The fact that over 99.9% of it is garbage doesn't mean you can't find the .1% and ignore the rest. It just takes a little digging and thinking. I do agree that asking the right questions is an important skill to learn and to teach.

[–] bruce-129 10 years ago

For the majority of people, and that is what counts to keep the majority of "voters" confused.

[–] Rob-O-Cop 10 years ago

The problem is deciphering the good from the bad. You have movies like this which so definitely have an agenda, that appear to be offering an honest and true picture but in reality are just hyping one side of an argument and ignoring important details. You can be pro the concept of nuclear power and this movie is still lying to you. ie lying to the people who are on the side of their argument.

[–] melinda2001 10 years ago

Right. People need to learn to separate the good from the bad. It's not difficult but it does take effort both to learn and to apply, and that's why it's not a common skill.

One nice thing is that you can still learn a lot from the bad stuff. For example, I lean far left but I still go to Fox News and the Wall Street Journal to find out what conservatives are thinking. With this movie I didn't expect to be converted but I definitely came with an open mind. Unfortunately I did not learn anything of value other than the fact that someone is spending money on nuclear energy PR.

[–] Rob-O-Cop 10 years ago

unfortunately the lines are not black and white, it's all grey in there and movies like this which present themselves as informed calm and rational and on the side of the people while hiding an agenda by nuclear energy corps don't do anything to make it clearer. It's in the interests of these people to make it as blurry as possible. to come across as being on our (humanities) side while hiding what ever ulterior motives they might have. Profit?
I still think Nuclear power has massive potential for us, I just don't think that for the same reasons the people who made this movie do.
I don't blame people for getting fooled by this sort of stuff either, it's designed to fool.
Fox news just scares me though, it's so stupidly off the grid you can't believe people actually swallow it, yet they do. The world is dumber than we give them credit for.

[–] melinda2001 10 years ago

Yes, though they're also smarter than we give them credit for. Of course this is about profit, and it's more than that. We'll eventually get this right even if we must exhaust all the other options first.

I wouldn't say that nuclear power holds a lot of promise for us, and that includes fusion. In the end we need to live within the planet's heat budget. Luckily there is plenty of wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal energy around, and the quicker we can make those profitable the better off we'll be in the long term. Nuclear will be an important bridge, but we'll need to wean ourselves off of it just like we're doing with oil.

[–] jwn2126 9 years ago

Yep , nuclear energy pr .... So many things I could say about your inane posts and ingnorance even after watching the film... but I will just say , you are ignored ..

[–] JurijFedorov 10 years ago

As already stated. The plant was really old. They build it near the coast and not on a hill. Another plant was closer to the epicenter but was build on a hill and nothing happened to it. New plants are a million times more safe, and are even build so that they can withstand a airplane terrorist attack. And all over the world they are currently changing the old power plants because they have learned a lot from Fukushima. They try things out and they learn. Having said that. The areas evacuated in Fukushima are not dangerous. If you eat a lot of chips every year you get more radiation than found in these areas. And Hong-Kong is more radioactive than these areas in Fukushima. Have you heard of any Hong-Kong evacuation going on?

[–] Rob-O-Cop 9 years ago

kind of highlights the essential breaking of trust thing this industry continually does. "Nah mate, you can trust us this time, we're so much better than last time, that was a mistake, it won't happen again", and yet just under 4 years ago, it did happen, again.
The people responsible for the poor state of the fukushima plant are still in charge.
I do agree with you on the questioning the effects of radiation bit though. it's all horror stories and guess work, but still, probably best avoid consuming radioactive material.

[–] JurijFedorov 9 years ago

No. They all got fired. Japan created a new agency for watching over nuclear power and shut down the old one. And they did learn from it. Search for the Canadian YouTube videos on nuclear power. They changed their safety system even though they don't have tsunamis. And all other countries did the same thing, even China. And the new powerplants like the ones being build in China are not 60'ties powerplants but generation 3 and 3+. That's a whole different technology from the Fukushima plant and they would easily handle an even bigger tsunami and even rum without power for 72 hours. And both Germany and Japan will cease to use nuclear power. Germany in 2022.

[–] larsvanness 9 years ago

Always with the negative waves. Why can't you say something righteous for a change? Why can't you be positive? It's a beautiful technology and it will be there for us. Now go on back down into your hole.

[–] Rob-O-Cop 9 years ago

It is a beautiful technology, but we don't yet know how to control it. That's the problem, that and we've got a corrupt industry that wants to force it's hand on us knowing it doesn't have the ability to put the fire out yet. nuclear power is probably the solution to all our energy needs at some point in time. That we have disaster after disaster each one after the industry ASSURES us "there is absolutely no risk, it's all completely under control"; that's the point of contention really isn't it. We have a bunch of self serving liars feeding us half truths and twisted facts. If we can solve that we could really move forward.

[–] larsvanness 9 years ago

You are absolutely right Rob-O-Cop. The problem has always been that the energy industry views nuclear power as a cash cow to create money rather than electricity and hasn't made a big enough investment in the necessary safe guards that are available. As a college student I did have the opportunity to work with scientists at the Sandia Labs in Albuquerque who were developing the 4th generation technology of fast breeder reactors which incorporated nearly full proof safety mechanisms. The technology is very expensive, however, in my opinion it makes more sense to burn recyclable uranium fuel to power steam turbines than to burn fossil fuels which are more easily transportable or coal which is much more difficult to clean of dirty exhaust gases.