element 94
video, 4 min, 2003
by: E 10 / aka: Rolf Pilarsky und Lisa Ward

A look from the past to the present, of the first quantity of plutonium ever produced (element 94) in 1941, to the modern day status of over 500 nuclear power plants in existence worldwide.
"The world's first specimen of plutonium was invisible. An almost undetectable minute quantity of it was produced in February 1941, at the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California at Berkley, by bombarding a metal target in a machine called a cyclotron. Glenn Seaborg and his colleagues carried out the subtle chemical analysis that identified element 94, the first 'artificial' element ever created. Element 94 would be named 'plutonium', after Pluto. Seaborg and his colleagues apparently did not recall that Pluto had been named after the Greek god of the underworld. The infernal association thus inadvertently attached to their new element was to become all too appropriate."
Wallter C. Patterson, "The Plutonium Business and the Spread of the Bomb"

element 94 was screened at:
VI FICA, International Festival of Environmental Film and Video, Cidade de Goias, Brazil, 2004
Media Forum 05 of Moscow International Film Festival, Russia 2004
10th Envirofilm Festival, Banská Bystrica, Zvolen, Banská Stiavnica, Slovakia, 2004
3 rd RestCycling Art Festival, Berlin, 2004
The Encounter Film Festival, Cairo, Egypt, 2004