Talk:Pandora's Promise

Film Credits
As per concerns by User:Ddd1600, here's info from the credits:

Written and Directed by Robert Stone

Produced by Robert Stone Jim Swartz Susan Swartz

Executive Producers Dan Cogan Paul Allen Jody Allen Sir Richard Branson Aimee & Frank Batten Eric Dobkin

Executive Producers Lynn, Gavin & Diana Dougan Steve Kirsch Ross Koningstein Ray Rothrock

Co-Executive Producer Peter Wagner

Made with the Generous Support of IMPACT PARTNERS and its following members: Diana Barrett for the Fledgling Fund Steve Cohen Peggy and Yogan Dalal Ian Darling Patricia Lambrecht Dan Lynch Gib and Susan Myers Joan Platt Beth Sackler & Jeff Cohen

Foundation Support Lotus Foundation Steven and Michele Kirsch Fund Small World Institute Fund Alex C. Walker Foundation Peter Norvig Foundation Alfred J. Guiffrida and Pamela J. Joyner Fund Ross Koningstein and Patrisia Spezzaferro Fund The Franklin & Catherine Johnson Foundation Schwab Charitable Fund

Senior Science Advisor  Burton Richter

Associate Producers     Alison Guss Holly Tarson Noah Golden

Additional Photography  Tom Hurwitz

Production Assistants   Rebekah Aronson Rupert Earl Gordon Eckler Tom Ralphs Laman Rylan Morris Caleb Stone Luc Stone Jurgen Straub

[...]

FOR IMPACT PARTNERS Founder                  Geralyn White Dreyfous Director of Operations   Amy Augustino Assistant to Dan Cougan  Kelsey Koenig

FOR VULCAN PRODUCTIONS Supervising Producer        Bonnie Benjamin-Phariss Senior Producers            Susan M. Coliton Hillary Sparrow Production Coordinator      Miriam Larkin Measurement and Evaluation  William Vesneski Legal Counsel               Davina Inslee Business Affairs            BJ Miller Evaluation                  Mission Measurement

[...]

EXTRA SPECIAL THANKS FOR THEIR GENEROUS SUPPORT Rachel Pritzker and Roland Pritzker

[...]

-- Limulus (talk) 07:36, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Kennette Benedict from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
It's too bad Kennete Benedict and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists are sooooo ill-informed about nuclear power.

They have their nickers in a twist about safety and weapons proliferation, two scary but nonexistent bugaboos, about which one would expect scientists, especially those who put themselves forward as Atomic Scientists ought to know better.

According to the very large database of accidents related to production of electricity at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Basel, Switzerland, nuclear power in OECD countries has not caused even one fatality, and that includes Fukushima.

According to the report that UNSCEAR presented to the UN General Assembly in 2011, the Chernobyl fire caused 46 deaths: 28 plant workers who died from acute radiation syndrome (among 134 who were exposed to sufficient radiation levels to become ill), two who were killed during the fire by causes not related to radiation, one who died from coronary thrombosis, and fifteen excess cases of fatal thyroid cancer during the decade from 1996 to 2006 compared to averages in earlier decades, out of 6000 cases reported between 1986 and 2006. They remarked that there is no evidence of ongoing increased risk of cancer or any other disease related to radiation in Europe. They also conclude that radiation doses to the general public in the three most affected countries (Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia) were relatively low and most residents ``need not live in fear of serious health consequences." In the most affected areas, the average additional dose over the period 1986-2005 is approximately 9 millisieverts (mSv), which is less than one computed tomography (CT) scan.

According to the 2013 UNSCEAR Fukushima report, nobody was killed, injured, or made ill, except two plant workers who got first-degree burns on their feet when contaminated water overflowed into their boots. It notes that ``Japanese people receive an effective dose of radiation from normally occurring sources of, on average, about 2.1 mSv annually and a total of about 170 mSv over their lifetimes.... No radiation-related deaths or acute diseases have been observed among the workers or general public exposed to radiation from the accident....  For adults in Fukushima Prefecture, the Committee estimates [the increase in] average lifetime effective dose to be of the order of 10 mSv or less... discernable increase in cancer incidence in this population that could be attributed to radiation exposure from the accident is not expected."

For comparison, the dose from one abdominal and pelvic CT scan with and without contrast would be about 30 mSv, about three times the expected additional lifetime exposure to residents of Fukushima Prefecture. This increases lifetime cancer risk from 1 in 5 to 1.005 in 5.

Weapons proliferation has always been their favorite stinking red herring.

Used fuel from any municipal reactor does contain plutonium, but it has never been successfully used to make an explosion, let alone a deployed weapon, because it doesn't work. To make a bomb, the plutonium must be both chemically and isotopically pure, consisting of at least 93% pure plutonium-239. To produce Pu-239 in a reactor without making too much of other isotopes, it is necessary to control the neutron temperature much more precisely than is feasible in a municipal reactor, and to irradiate the fuel for a very short time -- weeks instead of years. Even a rudimentary inspections regime would notice this. Separating Pu-239 from the other isotopes present in used power station fuel is enormously more expensive than separating U-235 from native uranium.

Even if "weapons-usable" material from nuclear power stations existed, the premise is still a red herring, because every advanced industrial nation either already has nuclear weapons, or the means to make them far more effectively than by fiddling with used power-station fuel. There is no evidence whatsoever that building or not building, or operating or not operating, nuclear power stations in advanced industrial economies, has any effect whatsoever on weapons proliferation. Jimmy Carter's boneheaded decision to stop fuel reprocessing didn't prevent Pakistan and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.

Don't pay any attention to the people behind the curtain at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

137.79.7.57 (talk) 03:40, 4 March 2017 (UTC)Van Snyder