However, we also visited a charter high school in Massachusetts. This was a very different experience. The senior class at the high school has been engaged in an intense cross-disciplinary study of nuclear energy and Vermont Yankee issues. We spoke to the entire senior class.
The high school students who had studied nuclear power asked very knowledgeable questions, and some were interested in careers in nuclear energy. At the University of Vermont, few of the college students at the film knew much about nuclear power. Many of the college student questions were anti-nuclear position statements disguised as questions. ("Why hasn't the NRC ever turned down a license extension application?")
The ANS blog post is the story of only two classroom events, but examples are often more interesting than general statements. I hope you will enjoy reading it.
Hillary Archer of the Gund Institute at University of Vermont (UVM) directed a film about nuclear power, Transparent Radiation. It's a pretty negative film.
Actions speak louder than words. If the Gund Institute thought coal plants were a bigger problem than nuclear plants, they would have made a film about coal.
However, in my previous post about the film a lengthy comment stream made it clear that some people at Gund thought I was misquoting them or misrepresenting the film. So in this post, I am being extra-extra careful. In this post, I have one quote from the film....followed by my opinion. Then I have the two film trailers...followed by my opinion.
My opinions are clearly marked. Readers can read the quote, watch the trailers, read my opinions, and come to their own conclusions.
Energy Choices Quote
After I heard this quote in the film, I asked for the entire quote to put in my blog. I thank Hillary Archer for sending me the quote.
The quote describes a possible energy future.
"If we were able to reduce our per capita energy consumption in the United states from what it is, even to European levels, which is still a very developed society, we'd be cutting our energy demand generally in half, and doing about the same to our electricity demand. So if you envision this stack, we've taken 50% and made it unnecessary. It's easy to imagine that the 20% that we get from nuclear could be in the 50% that's rendered unnecessary, so this whole issue of you need nuclear power is rendered irrelevant." by Eric Garza, in the film Transparent Radiation, 2011
My opinion: I interpreted this quote as saying that shutting nuclear plants is a very high priority action. Since 50% of our electricity comes from coal, cutting back electricity use by 50% could mean that we didn't need any coal plants. As I read this quote, I think it implies that shutting nuclear plants is higher priority than shutting all the coal plants. The nuclear plants would be the first to go. That's how I interpreted this quote.
In several email exchanges with people at Gund, they have made it quite clear that they think my interpretation of this quote is completely incorrect.
However, my opinion of the quote remains the same. IMHO, the quote recommends shutting the nuclear plants first. Other people's opinions that my opinion is incorrect--doesn't change my opinion.
Trailers for the Film
Here are the two trailers for the film, Transparent Radiation. Each is less than two minutes long, so you can watch them both.
My Opinion:
Scare First: The first part of each trailer is basically attention-getting. It consists of rather frightening footage, usually with Geiger counter sounds in the background. Trailers include tsunami footage and (one trailer) atomic bomb footage.
In watching the early attention-getting frames, I am most puzzled by what happens about sixteen seconds into the trailers. It looks like workers at Fukushima, dressed in anti-c's (radiation protection clothes), are carrying a body bag. Indeed, two people drowned at the Fukushima plant during the tsunami and one person was killed when his crane toppled during the earthquake. (About 20,000 people in Japan died during the catastrophe. Most were drowned or crushed.) Deaths at the plant were caused by the natural catastrophe. Anyhow, the body-bag sequence is both puzzling and irrelevant to nuclear energy. That is my opinion.
(Someone is sure to point out that one man at the plant died of heat exhaustion later, while working. It doesn't look like these men are carrying him. First you see the men in a cluster outside the plant, then carrying the bag.)
Reform Later: Moving from the scare scenes at the beginning, the trailers then consist of many people making general statements. Most of these statements strike me as almost religious in tone: variations of the theme that "we have to rethink everything" or "it's a new age." We are also described as needing to curb our insatiable appetites for material goods, stop neglecting the limitations of the world, and so forth. These statements may be a call to personal action, but I don't see them as having much to do with nuclear.
There are a few statements about nuclear energy. These are also very general remarks, without much substance. For example, there is one statement that "nuclear is not a silver bullet." This is a straw man. Did some unknown person, not in the film, say nuclear is a silver bullet? I know that nuclear can be a great help in slowing global warming, but I don't know any nuclear supporter who would call it a silver bullet. There is also one statement in the trailer about renewables, claiming that we have lacked interest in renewables and are holding on to things we are used to.
I noticed only one number in these trailers: concern with U238 and its four billion year half-life. I described my opinion of this long-half-life statement in my previous post, so I won't repeat myself. (The 50% quote above was in the film, not the trailers.)
My concluding opinion
The trailers are very well done as advocacy pieces. They start with scary images, and move on to almost religious statements about how we can do better. This is a good sequence for convincing people. It is regularly used in advocacy (and propaganda and sermons and political speeches) of all kinds.
In my opinion, these are excellent trailers, but not trailers that encourage thought about energy choices. The images and words are visceral and direct: This is frightening! We must reform!
The problem with pro-nuclear people (like me) is that I load up my posts with numbers and comparisons. I can see by these trailers that a more direct approach works better.
And yet...somehow...this is not the sort of thing I expected to see as a university project about energy.
End Note: Ms. Archer is a lovely and gracious person, and I feel badly about having a low opinion of the film. I am grateful that she sent me any quote that I requested. I have decided that being a film critic must be a really really terrible job.
Last week, I attended the film Transparent Radiation at University of Vermont. The film poster is to the left. The purpose of this film was to show the negative side of nuclear energy, echoing the viewpoint of the filmmakers.
After the film was shown, there was a panel discussion. Howard Shaffer was on the panel. Shaffer blogged about the film and his panel experience at the American Nuclear Society's ANS Nuclear Cafe: Transparent Radiation--A Film: The View from the Panel.
Howard and I thought that I might blog at ANS later this month, perhaps my post would be The View from the Audience. In preparation for writing the blog post, I contacted the film director, Hillary Archer, and also a faculty member at the Gund Institute, Gary Flomenhoft, for further information and quotes.
The email conversation didn't go all that well. This was at least partially my fault. I am grateful that Archer obtained all the quotes I wanted. She was very gracious.
The Quote I Wanted
I emailed Archer that I wanted to obtain the quote about the how some nuclear materials had a four billion year half-life, because I loved that quote and I wanted to use it in my blog. She sent me the quote, but she also was very interested in why I loved it. Would I share my opinion of the quote?
After a bit of back and forth, I wrote Archer an email about the quote. Later I thought: Why let a good rant go to waste? I'll put the email on my blog! So here it is. I have edited it a little by removing a short paragraph that referred to earlier emails. I also include the entire quote from the film, as sent to me by Archer.
My Email to Hillary Archer
Hello Hillary
Thank you for the quote. I appreciate you sharing this and helping me be more accurate!
-snip-
You wanted my opinion of the quote, and I said that my opinion would be in the blog. I don't have an obligation to share my opinions with you before I even write them. I DO have an obligation to get the quotes right, and I have been working at that..
However. I will share my opinion of this quote, since it seems to be important to you. This quote shows a completely backward understanding of radioactivity and its dangers. It's the most perfect misunderstanding of radioactivity: half-life as scare story. During the film, I giggled during this quote. This whole business about protecting ourselves from U 238, which has been here since the planet was formed! It was very funny. U 238 is all over the place: in rocks, in coal, in the ocean. But these guys are going to hide it away, because it has a long half-life so it must be very dangerous. And somehow, nuclear energy caused it! Nope, the supernova that exploded and made the earth 4 billion years ago...that caused the existence of U 238!
On to a little education about radioactivity. A long half life means an isotope is less dangerous. Think about it. Let's say you have a 100 atoms of an isotope with a half life of ten minutes. You can expect 50 radioactive decays in the first ten minutes. Short half-life, lots of radiation released quickly.
Let's say those 100 atoms are of an isotope with a half-life of ten years. The first ten years will have 50 decays, or one decay every couple of months. Long half-life, very little radiation released at a time.
This is why we can build a building of granite, which contains long-half-life radioactive materials. The long half-life means the granite isn't very radioactive. A 4 billion year half-life means very low radioactivity indeed!
It makes a good scare story, though. Be afraid. Be very afraid. It's gonna be radioactive for billions of years (as it has been already)! But to anyone with a bit of understanding of radioactivity, it's a giggle.
By the way, since you value honesty. Half of the electricity in this country comes from coal. Comparing coal and nuclear is not a "straw man," as Gary called it. You cannot dismiss facts by claiming: "that's a straw man." That is not honesty about energy.
By the way, I just found this today. Might be interesting...
Thank you for sending me the exact quotes. I appreciate the quotes, and I appreciate the time you took to send them. I hope I have answered your questions. I have taken some time about it, and tried my best to answer.
Best,
Meredith
The Quote Itself
First, a note. The exact words in Gary Flomenhoft's email to me were: "I believe nuclear vs coal is a straw man argument." He likes neither nuclear nor coal.
Further, the quote I requested from the film Transparent Radiation. I thank Hillary Archer for providing the full text of the quote.
"Take a look at one of the most toxic wastes we produce: plutonium, one of the most toxic substances know to humans, half life of 23,400 years more or less. And that means half of it will be gone in that long, but it's so toxic we need to wait many many many half lives. There are other nuclear wastes that are extremely dangerous, with a half life of a million years; depleted uranium, a half life of four billion years- the life of the planet. So we have to keep track of these wastes, at the very minimum, many multiples of how long civilization has been around. Most likely for as long as the human species has been around or much longer." Joshua Farley from the film Transparent Radiation, 2011
At ANS Nuclear Cafe this morning, I have a post: Young People and Nuclear Power.
