Pandora’s Promise: Fuelling the Nuclear Debate
November 6, 2013
By Malcolm Bernard
Director of Communications
Canadian Nuclear Association
Pandora’s Promise is easily the most significant communications event to affect the nuclear industry this year, with the obvious exception of the recurring mistakes in cleaning up the Fukushima site.
The movie challenges a core belief held by the nuclear industry’s opponents, that the dangers of nuclear energy outweigh its benefits. In mounting that challenge, filmmaker Robert Stone has provided the nuclear industry with an effective vehicle to re-open public discussion.
Pandora’s Promise will be screened on CNN
Thursday, November 7, 2013 at 9 pm ET.
Click here for CNN’s coverage.
Yet the movie is no magic bullet. Cheered by industry insiders, and reviled by its opponents, the movie makes effective points without always providing adequate context. For those of us who lived through the Cold War, and Prime Minister Trudeau’s attempts to galvanize arms-control negotiations, and the trio of nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and now Fukushima, the movie covers familiar territory. We understand Stone’s point of view, as my colleague John Stewart points out.
For those who are new to the debate, the movie takes for granted that audiences have sufficient information to consider the points in play. Rosey Li, our marketing officer who is new to the nuclear industry, found the movie’s most significant evidence needed further interpretation.
Nuclear communicators owe the public a great deal of further information. If Pandora’s Promise catalyzes a public debate, then we need to engage the public with answers. Not a sales job. Just simple, accurate facts.
That’s why the Canadian Nuclear Association was established more than five decades ago. We’re still here. We hope that we’re still helpful, as new audiences take up enduring questions.
By the way, John Stewart takes up some of those questions here.
Enjoy your reading, and let us know what further information you require. We’re on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
More relevant links
Read a CNN article about Pandora’s Promise
Buy Pandora’s Promise on iTunes
