The environmentalist case for nuclear power? For most progressives, it's like hearing "the liberal case for the death penalty". A contradiction in terms, surely? Well, readers of this paper will already know about the new ideas being ventilated on this issue from George Monbiot's writings. This documentary, from Robert Stone, sets out to think the unthinkable and ask the unaskable: should we learn to stop worrying and love nuclear energy?

Stone's case is that it has been massively misunderstood and misrepresented by a 60s generation of environmentalists: he argues that nuclear is a hugely efficient and relatively clean energy source that is now vitally needed as billions of people in emerging economies such as India, China and Brazil are hungry for power. Wind turbines and solar panels, he says, are failing to meet even a fraction of urgent needs. But the film has been criticised for deriding wind and solar energy unduly. Perhaps the film could have spent longer on safety – and it is a little glib in its dismissal of the issue. Holding up the Geiger counter at a disaster site and showing the surprisingly low number is a bit obtuse and smug, and doesn't address people's fears about an explosion. The anti-nuclear protesters are compared to climate-change deniers because of their dismissal of science: actually, some of the smooth pro-nuclear rhetoric sounded like that of the climate sceptics. This film certainly chops up a few sacred cows. Could it be that the anti-wind brigade will have to make common cause with climate change scientists?