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Pipe crawler and Reactorsaurus sound as if they should be characters in the forthcoming apocalyptic robots v humans film, Terminator Salvation. The first might scurry centipede-like through wall cavities and drains, before bursting out to attack. Meanwhile, the second crushes all in its path in gargantuan metal jaws.

Physicians for Social Responsibility invites the public to "Nuclear Reconsidered-the Start of a Conversation" at 7 p.m. April 6 on the third floor of Owen Hall at UNC Asheville. The League of Women Voters co-sponsor the event with the World Affairs Council and United Nations Association. Advertisement Two short films will be shown, each to be followed by discussion and comments from the audience. To set the scene for the conversation, "Building a World Beyond War" will offer rationale for ending war. After a short question and comment period, "Nuclear Weapons and the Human Future" will be the main presentation, followed by discussion. Two member physicians, Lew Patrie & Don Richardson, will be resource people for questions. Leah Karpen, a member of both Physicians for Social Responsibility and the League of Women Voters, will be the moderator. A member of the league will explain its position on nuclear issues. This event is open to the public at no charge.

With echoes of that fantastic/horrifying nuclear thriller Edge Of Darkness (don't wait for the film, see the original TV series), energy giant EDF has been busted for spying on our colleagues at the Greenpeace in France. Five people have been indicted by the French courts, including two EDF security executives, a computer expert and the head of a private investigation firm. The charge: attempting to hack into Greenpeace computer systems in France.

"Is it OK if I talk about something besides health-care reform now? I know we're all fixated on the fate of President Obama's signature mission, but surely we can agree that his newly announced bid to build more nuclear power plants is worth a thousand words. The politics alone are fascinating. Not that long ago, any Democratic president daring to fly a "More Nukes" banner would have been fried by his own base. Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and the Boss would have plugged in for a protest concert, just as they did for the "No Nukes" show in '79. But Obama's request for $54 billion in federal loan guarantees, and his State of the Union pitch for "a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants," have barely moved the ire meter. Some environmentalists are unhappy - for good reason. But this isn't like the old days, when the accident at Three Mile Island sowed public hysteria, and a Jane Fonda film, The China Syndrome, did boffo box office by painting nuclear-industry leaders as reckless plutocrats. Today, most grassroots Democrats believe our first priority should be combating global warming by cutting carbon dioxide emissions, and it just so happens that nuclear plants don't emit that greenhouse gas."

"Anyone who was at Tooele County's public information meeting about depleted uranium last week would have come away convinced that DU is perfectly safe for shallow-cell storage and EnergySolutions is just the company to store it. After all, three scientific experts testified to that effect. If you believe this was the final word on DU, Al Gore's got a film he'd like you to see to learn the gospel truth about global warming - and plenty of other people have beachfront property to sell you."

Award-winning Frozen Seed screens Nov. 6 Imagine a frozen wasteland where food is scarce and winter is permanent. A nuclear war has forced survivors to seek refuge underground. A buried seed cache lays somewhere in the ruins of modern society and scientists are racing against a totalitarian regime, trying to find it. It's a compelling tale told in just under 10 minutes by producers Tim Bissell and Craig Watkins.

French nuclear companies are hoping to play a central role in the government's plan to build a new generation of reactors. At home, however, the industry has been buffeted by a series of mishaps.

"While disarmament experts and antinuclear campaigners may have heard about atomic-bomb survivors, a pair of documentaries about hibakusha that aim to connect with the younger generation were recently completed by two young directors from Costa Rica and Japan. Erika Bagnarello's "Flashes of Hope" and Takashi Kunimoto's "Traveling with Hibakusha: Across Generations" take different approaches but both feature a group of more than 100 survivors who cruised around the world in 2008 in a project organized by nongovernmental organization Peace Boat."

"It is, in the words of the Danish filmmaker Michael Madsen, "a place we must remember to forget." On a wooded island more than a hundred miles northwest of Helsinki, in the town of Eurajoki, Finnish engineers are digging a tunnel. When it is done 10 years from now, it will corkscrew three miles in and 1,600 feet down into crystalline gneiss bedrock that has been the foundation of Finland for 1.8 billion years. And there, in a darkness that is still being created, the used fuel rods from Finland's nuclear reactors - full of radioactive elements from the periodic table as dreamed up by Lord Voldemort, spitting neutrons and gamma rays - are to be sealed away forever, or at least 100,000 years. "