The movie basically talked about Nuclear Power and also re-portrayed the events of Fukushima, and Chernobyl. It focused a lot on the description of how these events were harmful and I believe the point made here was the lack of safety regarding nuclear power. Of course, we could easily see that there were a certain amount of people that were against nuclear power and they had their reasons. Among them, Mark Lynas, who was against it; his reason was simple, “I am an environmentalist.”
In my opinion, Nuclear isn’t particularly as dangerous as fossil fuel combustion for instance. The fact that it kills fewer people than coal mining is a valid fact to use to back this statement up. Furthermore, I believe that people do not seem to take monetary cost into account. Fukushima killed fewer people because they evacuated a huge area. Much of that was farmland (as with the gigantic Chernobyl exclusion zone) and Japan just lost 150,000 acres of productive land according to their review on Fukushima, not to mention the all the money stranded in the infrastructure and buildings for a city of 100,000 people. Then there are the costs of the resettlement itself and the costs from the psychological effects on the displaced population.
However, we are never too safe. Even though nuclear reactor is a clean form of energy, as opposed to other sources of energy, the reactor itself can be harmful to us. Scientific progress can very much be a double hedged sword. Future reactors will probably be even “safer”. But proving that they’re safe over long periods of time in a convincing manner is basically impossible to do, at least for now. At the end of the day, both sides (nuclear or not) want to protect the earth. Nuclear power says it’s clean and fossil fuels are not; Those who are anti-nuclear are basically saying that they’d rather burn fossil fuels than to live in fear with a possible nuclear power catastrophe. This is a very controversial subject. Overall, this movie also makes you wonder about their goal in relation to the targeted audience…
