Is nuclear energy the answer to climate change?

Should we learn to stop worrying and love nuclear energy? Is nuclear energy really a viable alternative to fossile fuels after the Fukushima disaster?

For some environmentalists the answer is a clear 'yes'. In light of repeated failures to reach political agreement on effective policies to combat climate change, they are on a mission to reverse the traditionally anti-nuclear inclinations of green movements.

In this thought-provoking essay, Rens van Munster and Casper Sylvest examine the ideological commitments and assumptions of pro-nuclear environmentalism, with a special focus on the work and career of documentary filmmaker Rob Stone, whose most recent production, Pandora's Promise(2013), has emerged as a central statement for more nuclear energy.

A close study of the film's rhetoric, its visual imagery and historical lineages, however, reveals that nuclear energy is not the silver bullet some environmentalists proclaim it to be.