Finally got a chance to see Nuclear Now, Oliver Stone's documentary on nuclear power. You can stream it for free at Register Now. Despite its flaws, it is worth your time. Some great footage. Here are my notes. Stone starts out with an autobiographical sketch, your basic lefty's view of nuclear, with lots of footage of atom bomb drills and anti-nuke protests. This is a good intro for his intended audience; but missing is the Viet Nam war protests (and fear of the draft), which in my memory were far more important than nuclear in creating the counter-culture.
I haven't seen this film yet, but with your excellent review, I definitely will. As for the cause of the problem, I'm still not convinced we should focus all our attention on the NRC. Overregulation is the proximate cause, but not the root. NRC bureaucrats do what the politicians tell them to do. The politicians do what the public wants, or thinks they want, given almost total ignorance. I believe the root cause is this ignorance.
What should we do to solve the problem? What is the first step? Abolishing the NRC just seems like an impossible goal.
I guess Stone thinks the first problem is public acceptance versus regulatory and related cost challenges, so he targets a general audience, who probably won’t be watching the film, and that can explain some of the failings. Could make a more useful film about practical fission deployments, targeting the politicians, commissioners, scientists, and academics that actually influence the regulations - going around to the world leading nuclear manufacturers, shipbuilders, EPA, NRC, etc and seeing what they have to say about costs, phasing out LNT, transforming the NRC, and transitioning to underwriter certification. A distillation of the Gordian Knot and the solution - with clear questions and visuals from the the thinkers and doers.
I thought the film quality was extremely disappointing - looked like a bottom of barrel YouTube video hardly befitting the promethean subject matter. Could have done a better job over a weekend.
Thanks for the review- it is on my list now that it is streaming. My view is that it is mostly the boomer left or those that were influenced by them that needs to be brought along here, so it is understandable that Stone would focus on things from that angle. Hating on government regulators or focusing on cost would just end up coding as “right wing” even if it was tried in good faith, and that would lose the target audience. Stone also has to find a conspiracy angle in everything, but that is just who he is...
I guess my hope is that this will cause people to get more interested in it, and there is now a ton of more positive info out there if one takes even a quick look on YT, Twitter, Substack, etc.
As Stone’s interviewed source regarding LNT creation story, I feel personally attacked. You keep claiming that the RF intent was to use radiation fear in anti weapons campaign. How do you know what they INTENDED? Do you simple accept their words without paying attention a to their actions?
Oil companies have never accepted their own scarcity propaganda. They know there plenty of resource to enable destructive over-production. They top planners of the Seven Sisters coordinated production to ensure prices didn’t collapse. They helped train OPEC leaders to perform the same service.
Nuclear power represented an uncontrollable source of new supply. Your often repeated assertion that Big Oil made a big investment in nuclear is misleading because it was a tiny investment relative to the scale of the companies involved.
If, as you claim, the nuclear industry is responsible for losing cost control, why didn’t the much smarter oil guys use their superior skills to create a success in the technology?
As I’ve said repeatedly, fossil fuel INTERESTS, not just Big Oil, had the means, motive and opportunity to assist in raising the barriers to entry for the nascent nuclear power business. It was intruding on a market they believed they OWNED.
People who want to learn more about the involvement of wealthy fossil fuel interests in the temporarily successful effort to suppress fission should skim through Environmentalism: Ideology and Power by Donald Gibson.
Among many other facts, it describes how Robert Anderson "provided seed money for the formation of Friends of the Earth" (p. 64) AND also "helped finance creation of the John Muir Institute" (p.65).
That source, BTW, attributes the motives of the fossil fuel interests to Malthusianism. It's more logical and in keeping with the way wealthy people act to believe that their underlying motive was to protect their existing power base and to expand their wealth.
Jack - I interviewed Tom Turner for Atomic Show #256
From the blog post accompanying the interview:
“As Turner acknowledged, FOE’s early success was greatly assisted by a major contribution from Robert O. Anderson, the CEO of the Atlantic Richfield Company, one of the largest oil and gas producers in the United States at the time. Turner wasn’t able to explain why Anderson provided the money; he did say that it wasn’t because of any personal relationship between him and Brower.”
But you’ve somehow missed the point that the Anderson contribution is just an EXAMPLE. The book I linked to earlier provides information about specifically antinuclear donations from Rockefeller Brothers Fund, McGeorge Bundy, Ford Foundation and numerous other members of the Hydrocarbon Economy elites.
You keep talking about big investments in nuclear. How did they compare to CAPEX spent on oil & gas development and production?
I think the functionally harmless point about nuclear waste is starting to get out there. The Decouple studios and Chris Keefer nuclear twitter cluster have been making that case. Keefer testified to a Canadian government committee that after 600 years you have to pulverize and ingest it to be harmed
Further to that, the radioactivity is itself functionally irrelevant to the risk of spent fuel, which will kill you with simple chemical toxicity before you can get much radiation from eating it
Generally agree but this statement sticks out as total nonsense.
"No talk about the need to keep the U-238 around for breeders."
U238 is readily available all over the place. spent fuel u238 is the most expensive source of u238. Depleted uranium stores are likely the cheapest.
I haven't seen this film yet, but with your excellent review, I definitely will. As for the cause of the problem, I'm still not convinced we should focus all our attention on the NRC. Overregulation is the proximate cause, but not the root. NRC bureaucrats do what the politicians tell them to do. The politicians do what the public wants, or thinks they want, given almost total ignorance. I believe the root cause is this ignorance.
What should we do to solve the problem? What is the first step? Abolishing the NRC just seems like an impossible goal.
I guess Stone thinks the first problem is public acceptance versus regulatory and related cost challenges, so he targets a general audience, who probably won’t be watching the film, and that can explain some of the failings. Could make a more useful film about practical fission deployments, targeting the politicians, commissioners, scientists, and academics that actually influence the regulations - going around to the world leading nuclear manufacturers, shipbuilders, EPA, NRC, etc and seeing what they have to say about costs, phasing out LNT, transforming the NRC, and transitioning to underwriter certification. A distillation of the Gordian Knot and the solution - with clear questions and visuals from the the thinkers and doers.
I thought the film quality was extremely disappointing - looked like a bottom of barrel YouTube video hardly befitting the promethean subject matter. Could have done a better job over a weekend.
Thanks for the review- it is on my list now that it is streaming. My view is that it is mostly the boomer left or those that were influenced by them that needs to be brought along here, so it is understandable that Stone would focus on things from that angle. Hating on government regulators or focusing on cost would just end up coding as “right wing” even if it was tried in good faith, and that would lose the target audience. Stone also has to find a conspiracy angle in everything, but that is just who he is...
I guess my hope is that this will cause people to get more interested in it, and there is now a ton of more positive info out there if one takes even a quick look on YT, Twitter, Substack, etc.
Jack
As Stone’s interviewed source regarding LNT creation story, I feel personally attacked. You keep claiming that the RF intent was to use radiation fear in anti weapons campaign. How do you know what they INTENDED? Do you simple accept their words without paying attention a to their actions?
Oil companies have never accepted their own scarcity propaganda. They know there plenty of resource to enable destructive over-production. They top planners of the Seven Sisters coordinated production to ensure prices didn’t collapse. They helped train OPEC leaders to perform the same service.
Nuclear power represented an uncontrollable source of new supply. Your often repeated assertion that Big Oil made a big investment in nuclear is misleading because it was a tiny investment relative to the scale of the companies involved.
If, as you claim, the nuclear industry is responsible for losing cost control, why didn’t the much smarter oil guys use their superior skills to create a success in the technology?
As I’ve said repeatedly, fossil fuel INTERESTS, not just Big Oil, had the means, motive and opportunity to assist in raising the barriers to entry for the nascent nuclear power business. It was intruding on a market they believed they OWNED.
People who want to learn more about the involvement of wealthy fossil fuel interests in the temporarily successful effort to suppress fission should skim through Environmentalism: Ideology and Power by Donald Gibson.
It's available from Google Books (https://books.google.com/books?id=D3ZE7zYVynUC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=david+brower+robert+anderson&source=bl&ots=UOlL91XRZs&sig=bmQ4s6kkH5YHsoDsCIxrIGBf1RY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qNf8UZDHM5Lm8wS3uYHYCA&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=200%2C000&f=false)
Among many other facts, it describes how Robert Anderson "provided seed money for the formation of Friends of the Earth" (p. 64) AND also "helped finance creation of the John Muir Institute" (p.65).
That source, BTW, attributes the motives of the fossil fuel interests to Malthusianism. It's more logical and in keeping with the way wealthy people act to believe that their underlying motive was to protect their existing power base and to expand their wealth.
Jack - I interviewed Tom Turner for Atomic Show #256
From the blog post accompanying the interview:
“As Turner acknowledged, FOE’s early success was greatly assisted by a major contribution from Robert O. Anderson, the CEO of the Atlantic Richfield Company, one of the largest oil and gas producers in the United States at the time. Turner wasn’t able to explain why Anderson provided the money; he did say that it wasn’t because of any personal relationship between him and Brower.”
https://atomicinsights.com/atomic-show-256-tom-turner-talks-david-brower/
But you’ve somehow missed the point that the Anderson contribution is just an EXAMPLE. The book I linked to earlier provides information about specifically antinuclear donations from Rockefeller Brothers Fund, McGeorge Bundy, Ford Foundation and numerous other members of the Hydrocarbon Economy elites.
You keep talking about big investments in nuclear. How did they compare to CAPEX spent on oil & gas development and production?
XLNT
XLNT
XLNT
I think the functionally harmless point about nuclear waste is starting to get out there. The Decouple studios and Chris Keefer nuclear twitter cluster have been making that case. Keefer testified to a Canadian government committee that after 600 years you have to pulverize and ingest it to be harmed
Further to that, the radioactivity is itself functionally irrelevant to the risk of spent fuel, which will kill you with simple chemical toxicity before you can get much radiation from eating it
Excellent summary, though I do believe that the 1971 NEPA fiasco did as much damage to proposed nuclear builds as anything else pre-TMI incident.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvert_Cliffs%27_Coordinating_Committee,_Inc._v._Atomic_Energy_Commission