When most people hear the words “nuclear power,” their first thoughts likely go to destruction. Older generations may recall first seeing the horrific images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Others grew up with the ever-present threat of nuclear bombs annihilating the planet, as some families built fallout shelters and most children were required to participate in duck-and-cover drills at school. Aside from the bombs, a perceived sinister threat of nuclear waste rose up, providing origin stories for cinematic monsters like Godzilla. Even as the Cold War drew to a close and the threat of nuclear power grew more cartoonish, it was still looked upon as mutative and unnatural. Younger generations grew up alongside a pop culture brimming with images of glowing nuclear ooze capable of creating toxic avengers, ninja turtles and blinking three-eyed fish.
Yet, as outlined in Oliver Stone’s new documentary, Nuclear Now, there was a brief era when the promise of nuclear power provided hope for a better future, a means to an electric-powered world of innovation and sustainability. As climate change ravages the globe and science indicates we’ve got until 2050 to cut carbon emissions around the planet to virtually zero, Stone argues that we’ve backslid into nuclear-phobia that’s more threatening to civilization’s long-term survival than any kaiju ever could be. While there’s still time to turn things around, there’s certainly no time to waste. With demand for electricity continuing to increase, cutting carbon emissions would seem like a tall task with unlimited time. And here we are, growing closer to 2050 than to the year 2000.
Early in his film, Stone doesn’t rely on talking heads. Instead, his voiceover narration educates the viewer on the history of nuclear power. He highlights the shifting public perception that, in his view, wrongly turned public perception of nuclear power from a boon to a boogeyman. Stone points to this shift, naturally, as a product of a fossil fuel industry unwilling to relinquish its stranglehold on worldwide energy production (“it’s not conspiracy, it’s business”). Environmental groups like the Sierra Club had embraced zero-emission nuclear power until a cultural shift in attitude demonized it, ultimately leading to the No Nukes movement, full of rallies, hippie concerts and speeches by celebrities like Jane Fonda, that saw the green-oriented progressives agreeing with the fossil fuel industry on this one issue. Nuclear energy, the thinking goes, is simply too great a threat—whether to the environment on the one hand or bottom lines on the other.
As Stone begins to weave more interviews into his documentary, the folly of eschewing clean energy from nuclear power comes into focus. As one interview subject puts it, many people are also afraid to fly, because the image of plane crashes is so powerful. Yet air travel is exponentially safer than riding in a car. So, too, is the world stuck in anxiety about nuclear waste, which is actually the most heavily regulated and controlled of all toxic energy production byproducts, and fretting about meltdowns, the casualties of which are far lower than deaths caused by other energy industry disasters.
Nuclear Now’s most compelling and eye-opening moments are front-loaded in the film, as Stone shares this history and debunks the various arguments against this zero-emission energy. With animations and illustrated graphs, we see how other clean energy alternatives championed by the “unequivocally anti-nuclear” Sierra Club and other environmental groups like Greenpeace, only meet a sliver of the world’s electricity demand (and that’s not even taking into account gas-powered transportation). Time is simply running out without a drastic shift toward the clean energy that nuclear power can provide, according to Stone. The film stresses that climate change poses a far more existential threat than hypothetical nuclear disasters, a threat which can be mitigated to near zero through proper design.
The film does lose a bit of steam as it goes along, its focus shifting to current development of nuclear innovations that could help the world turn the corner. These are incredibly important breakthroughs, but their showcase here can come off a bit like eating your vegetables when the more savory aspects of the film are its examination of the sociocultural aspects at play in shifting public perception. With a climate on the brink, and almost insurmountable odds to achieve what’s necessary to ensure long-term sustainability, Stone compellingly and passionately argues that there’s always the nuclear option.
Photo courtesy of Abramorama
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