The Nuclear Comeback

This docoumentary takes a look at the pros and cons of using nuclear energy. It takes us to different nuclear plants located around the world. Some are far safer in their security regimes than Monty Burns’s plant at Springfield. Others, like the derelict facility at Chernobyl, provide a stark picture of the dangers of the technology when something serious fails – as it went awfully close to doing at a station in Sweden some years ago, an incident that still isn’t properly understood.

Only about 16 per cent of global energy needs come from nuclear fuel generation at present. Even if more facilities are constructed in record time, it’s unlikely more than 20 per cent of all needed power will ever be delivered from nuclear sources.

Meet a guy who calls himself a pro-nuclear Green. Take a look at a waste repository and ponder the less-than scrupulous reputation for honesty that has dogged the industry for decades. As one of the biggest users of coal energy in the world, Australia is among the highest per capita emitters of carbon on the planet.

As the documentary concludes, it raises the possibility that the almost moribund nuclear fuel industry has seized on the endgame scenario of fossil fuels and, ironically, found its salvation. Are we delivering ourselves into temptation or evil? Can the renewable energy lobby present a more viable alternative?

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Released 2007. Director: Justin Pemberton

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  • Hib

    Great documentary! This is the 5th or so doc on nuclear power i’ve seen on this site. Really nice to get so many different angles on a somewhat narrow subject.

    And I made up my mind. Nuclear power is great when it works but absolute armageddon when it goes wrong. And since fail safe system is inherently not part of human capabilities, I can’t at all be pro-nuclear…

    Sun & wind energy, baby!

  • Cam

    Hey, I too am pro-nuclear green! In fact, I am considering becoming a nuclear engineer

  • Cam

    Oh, and they said if we had a “magic fix” that was clean, renewable, and high-energy, then we would just use that…well, we do; nuclear fusion. Also, if we ever manage to achieve it, a total annihilation (anti-matter) reactor. Anyway, they say there probably won’t be a commercial fusion power station until 2050, but nobody is putting enough money into research & development. If they would just give it sufficient funding, we could have fusion by 2030 or even 2025

  • Hib

    Well, ultimately a tritium power plant would be preferrable. Lets mine jupiter!

    While tritium has several different experimentally determined values of its half-life, the National Institute of Standards and Technology lists 4,500±8 days (approximately 12.32 years). It decays into helium-3 by beta decay as in this nuclear equation:

    3
    1T → 3
    2He1+
    + e−
    + ν
    e

    and it releases 18.6 keV of energy in the process. The electron’s kinetic energy varies, with an average of 5.7 keV, while the remaining energy is carried off by the nearly undetectable electron antineutrino. Beta particles from tritium can penetrate only about 6.0 mm of air, and they are incapable of passing through the dead outermost layer of human skin.

  • Cam

    You know they’re building a pebble bed reactor in China. If you haven’t heard of those, I highly recommend looking them up; it’s a reactor that can’t melt down. It’s pretty cool imo

  • Maurice Aherne

    While there is obviously no relationship with the industry of banking; ‘the folly of humans’ is still -and sadly ever will be-’around’ The hubris of those with a vested interest in this ‘power’ industry is not unlike that of ‘pre-crash’ stock market -types.

    It would be mocumentary comic-if it were not so potentially tragic-to listen to the pro nuke Antipodean guy with the glasses-say ’56 deaths at Chernobyl’. Did I hear the brave Ukranian engineer estimate ’600,000′-as my attention was momentarily diverted. Who to believe?. I think -I’ll go with the latter.

    The PR spokeperson with the hi viz jacket–low everything else-did a spiel on Calder. If his hubris extends to “the first “-I would ask people to read the history of that plant then and now-in it’s various guises/names.

    Even a credible UK newspaper speaking about the level 5 accident in 1957-sourced that there have been 21 ‘less serious’ accidents to date.

    Don’t even imagine but do read-what they are still deciding to do with the waste.