Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

European broadcasters shun Pandora’s Promise; It contradicts their prior investments

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At the end of September 2013, Robert Stone was interviewed about Pandora’s Promise by Société Française d’Energie Nucléaire (SFEN). During that interview, he described his inability to convince a single European broadcaster — outside the UK — to show his documentary. According to Stone, representatives of broadcasting companies throughout the EU have told him that his film contradicts many of the other documentaries and programs that they have paid to develop and show to their viewers.

When companies or individuals have invested large sums of money to tell a tale, even if it is untrue, it is in their best interest to do whatever they can to silence someone telling a different story, even it is absolutely true.

One of Stone’s responses to the attempted blackout has been to arrange for a worldwide release on iTunes on December 3, 2013. In today’s media world, it is essentially impossible to suppress anyone who correctly points out that the emperors have no clothes or that people who claim that the small doses of radiation that members of the public received from Chernobyl have resulted in a large number of negative health effects or excess fatalities are wrong.

At the end of the interview, Stone offers a rather profane Americanism that we use frequently when told to adhere to a party line way of thinking. I won’t repeat it here because I do not like effect of having the ‘F’ word show up in searches on this site, but suffice it to say that I have heard — and used — the phrase many times during my long career.

I am, after all, a sailor.

PS – For anyone who resides in the United States, and not the European Union, Pandora’s Promise is scheduled to air on CNN on November 7 at 9:00 pm EST and on November 8 at 12:00 am.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. The greens are doing a dandy job in Europe with their dogma.

    The democrats are doing the same thru the exercise of power in the US.

    Both are wrong.

    • Yep they’ve done such a great job of doubling or tripling the cost of electricity while simultaneously keeping emissions unchanged by any significant margin… Could be part of the reason why Europe is the worst performing economic bloc on earth.

  2. Rod,

    You state that Stone’s movie is an ‘award-winning documentary’.

    I am trying to find such awards and I am unable to. Do you have specifics?

  4. I had no idea that it was being shown at all in the UK. There has been no marketing or media coverage of it of any kind over here.

    Thanks for the heads up Rod!

  5. I am not surprised. The state run tv channels in Sweden are stuffed with FUD. Every time there is a documentary about anything involving radiation it is utter unscientific garbage (with some exception if it happens to be something licensed from BBC). The commercial channels on the other hand seem completely uninterested in documentaries.

    Thank god I stopped watching tv 4 years ago.

    • I stopped watching TV last year. I absolutely love it. Nice increase in my effective income and I waste a lot less time in front of it.

  6. It is shameful. Most of us were sold on Europe as a liberal and progressive model of civil and reasonable society. It is neither. It is a manipulated and pre planned market where social media and mass agreement has taken the place of truth and honesty.

    Even now in Germany the dishonesty is taking on a new level of perversion. They are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic in a almost Baudrillard-ian Nth degree progression from reality:

    German call to ‘undo’ energy privatisation amid Berlin vote

    Now the capital, and Germany’s biggest city, may well go the same way. Every lamp-post in Berlin seems to be plastered with posters urging the citizenry to vote for two things:

    1. For Berlin to set up a public enterprise to trade in electricity from green sources and sell it to residents
    2. For the city government to open the way for the grid to be taken back into public ownership.     ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24763311 )

    These people have no concept of energy or environmental reality. They are so far misled as to exist in their own fractured and skitzophrenic political reality that is supported by “truths” that never were anything but old marketing plans and slogans.

    • John Tucker quoted:
      1. For Berlin to set up a public enterprise to trade in electricity from green sources and sell it to residents

      If some ‘Green Energy’ is good, more should be better. This needs to be taken to its logical end — make the power for Berlin 100% ‘green’. And then live with the consequences — watch the lights go out in the city some night when the wind stop blowing.

      • Exactly, Ive been thinking a lot about that recently too.

        If you are willing to accept them as a lifestyle wind and solar can be total clean energy liberation for the individual. The problem is they were marketed incorrectly as replacements for dependable energy on the on demand grid. They are not and thats where they drag everything down.

        I was discussing the Microsoft story yesterday about them buying all of a Texas wind farms electricity and someone commented that wind was now over 9 percent of electricity used in Texas. (per ERCOT). This stat intrigued me and I soon discovered that it was rather difficult to find basic ERCOT numbers. Of course that infuriated me.

        The next thing I am about to say probably wont surprise anyone here. After all the wind recently installed in Texas, in the lat few years they are burning more coal and more gas. As of through 2011 greenhouse gas emissions are back up.

        ( http://www.eia.gov/state/seds/data.cfm?incfile=/state/seds/sep_use/total/use_tot_TXcb.html&sid=TX )

        I cant tell you how closely the difficulty in finding up to date basic numbers (electricity generated, coal/gas consumption for electricity, emissions from electricity) reminds me of the subterfuge surrounding real numbers out of Germany and that scam. Thats a bad game to play now.

  7. Every time I feel really crappy about the United States and the direction we’re heading, I just look to Europe to make me feel better.

    • @Cory Stansbury

      I measure happiness in absolute terms, not relative ones. It never makes me feel any better if I find out that someone else is in worse shape.

      • Rod – But I hope that you appreciate that it was the Germans — who are leading the anti-nuclear charge in Europe — that gave us the word Schadenfreude – n: delight in another person’s misfortune.

        There’s an old English proverb: Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

      • Consider this in (ideological) warfare terms, and hearken to one of the all-time masters:  “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

        Let Berlin fail.  Talk up Ontario as a rousing success in spite of its Greens.  Wrench the conventional wisdom onto a new track.

    • Look at Europe as a glimpse into the future of the U.S., or any country that follows Progressive political philosophy, really.

    • Re: Tucker
      “Do they worry about GW disasters and fossil fuels? – or even dams ? Fires from wind power? No.”

      The most insidious and not so subtle part, fostered by the media and antis, is the constant insinuation that a nuclear accident with any plant is inevitable and unavoidable, and those that reach operational retirement are just statistical flukes.

      James Greenidge
      Queens NY

  9. All anti-nuclear politicians in Europe (and maybe some anti-fracking politicians too, come to think of it) should be rigorously investigated to see if they are taking money from Gazprom or OPEC. If they are, put them on trial for treason.

    • Thanks for this post Rod,

      It reminds me of a story in one of our Dutch major newspapers a few months ago, which detailed how a group of concerned scientists has paid a visit to our public broadcasting company. They wanted to know how many people holding academic degrees were working at the broadcasting company, since they where concerned about the flatly horrible scientific quality of much of the public television contect. The director replied that he ‘didn’t know’. After checking it out, he admitted that none – not a one – of the 300 staff working on the programming and creation of public television had an academic degree of any kind.

      Needless to say, nothing has been done to correct this situation.

      This revelation has been one of the most horrific I’ve seen lately concerning the state of affairs in my country in relation to Science Technology and Maths.

      And the politicians still have the gall to propose that The Netherlands should be a ‘knowledge economy’? Good luck with that. Bunch of frauds.

      • Knowledge economy…

        It’s just like I posted on a previous entry, there is a segment of the far left that seems to think that wealth just grows on trees and you can have a modern advanced economy based around blogging, coffee shops, free healthcare, and farmers markets without the need for ugly factories, power plants, smelters, or any other facility that produces real wealth.

      • You are so right. When I ask pseudo-greens how energy intensive heavy industry is supposed to ‘align its activities around the availability of natural energy’ not a few casually remark along the lines that such industries are ‘dinosaurs’ that don’t belong in a ‘knowledge economy’ anyway.

  10. One of the major European broadcaster Robert Stone is telling about in his interview is Arte, a German-French TV channel that specializes in documentaries and cultural programs. It is usually quite interesting but sadly has a strong anti-nuclear agenda. Not a month goes by without it showing a biased nuclear-related “documentary”.

    Ironically it has always been rather fond of Stone’s films since they were generally going their way; Pandora’s Promise is the first one that was turned down.

    • There’s an ARTE Documentary that is available in English, promoted by Chris Busby, called “Nuclear Waste: Dumped and Forgotten”. They actually edit an interview with an epidemiologist to make him say something he didn’t, then pass the information to another scientist to ridicule.

      It can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcaOX2rW0gc&list=UUGOCTxRYVB8Y0R9ZouZLlLg

      There’s a pretty obvious edit at around the 43:20 mark.

      That’s the kind of “Journalism” we’re dealing with.

  12. Interesting to hear the translation… I speak both French and English myself. He was more moderate and not calling anyone liars. In her “free” translation.. she’s calling some liars.

  13. I live in France. I haven’t seen Pandora’s Promise yet because of this scandalous attitude of the European distributers. Excellent article. I’m planning to do one in French in the same vein, around the time of the film’s launch to iTunes.