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« "A pro-nuclear propaganda film featuring the Breakthrough boys" GRIST | Main | The Nation busts the myths in Pandora's Promise »
Thursday
Jun132013

Real scientists see through phony Pandora infomercial

"By oversimplifying the issues, trivializing opposing viewpoints and mocking those who express them, and selectively presenting information in a misleading way, it serves more to obfuscate than to illuminate. As such, it adds little of value to the substantive debate about the merits of various energy sources in a carbon-constrained world." 

So writes high energy nuclear phycisist, Dr. Edwin Lyman of Union of Concerned Scientists, who saw straight through the infomercial propagandism of Pandora's Promise.

Another choice excerpt: "My hand got tired trying to jot down all the less-than-half truths put forth by the talking heads in the film, which could have benefited from some fact-checking. Here’s just one example.  Gwyneth Cravens, when prompted by the interviewer about the leak of tritium from the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, stated that someone would get more radiation from eating one banana than from drinking all the water coming out of the plant. Well, I thought I would double-check this one. The dose from eating a single banana is about 0.01 millirem. Entergy, Vermont Yankee’s owner, estimated in a 2011 report to the NRC that the leak detected in early 2010 released 2.79 curies of tritium into groundwater.  Assuming someone consumed all of this tritium in the form of tritiated water, that person would receive a dose of 185,000 millirem. Ms. Cravens was only off by a factor of twenty million."

Read the full review.

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