The movie starts off with many scientists that are pronuclear. Some of these scientists are in a sense scared to publicly claim that they are pronuclear because they do not want their career to get ruined if anything happens with nuclear plants that proves them wrong. As the Fukushima Daichi incident happened some said they were worried about the decision they made to be pronuclear and whether they were right or not.
A main theme is that the first time nuclear was introduced was through nuclear bombs, and this is a reason why people have a bad perception. One of the scientists even mentioned how he would have dreams as a kid that his whole town was getting bombed and he was the only one living. Previous generations were raised thinking that nuclear power was directly linked to nuclear weapons. People who changed their perception on nuclear power, did so by listening to expertise explanation. One person says he had experts who actually were creators of nuclear power explain the concept to him multiple times for him to become pronuclear and actually understand the process.
Important people (such as actors and singers) who were not informed about nuclear energy would go out infant of people and make speeches about how bad nuclear energy is. Of course regular people listen to what the famous people who get publicity and media say and believe it. There were even ads in papers that were published to scare people and push them to rally. These ads were actually sponsored by the oil companies who did not want to lose their business to nuclear energy, but people would not pay attention to it. A plant that would have been of great advantage to New York would have existed today if people were not so scared of what would happen.
It is very interesting to see this movie and reflect on how much importance media has had and continues to have on our life. Throughout the movie one can see that uninformed media personnel are the reason why regular people have such a horrible perception about nuclear radiation. In news stories for example they always mention numbers about radiation, but when thinking about it the regular people that have never studied radiation have absolutely no idea what those numbers even mean. The media publishes things in a way to look as if they are horrible, but essentially people do not even know what good and bad are when looking at radiation. Different places around the world have different natural levels of radiations. At a beach in Brazil for example the natural radiation is 30.
Being anti nuclear means that you are in favor of burning fossil fuels, worldwide 3 million people die because of fossil fuel emissions. If you ask people around no one knows the damages that coal has on people. Nuclear does not produce carbon dioxide, and this is why the scientists in this movie thought that it would be the only solution. One scientists talks about how nuclear is the second safest way of energy after wind. In all the history of commercial nuclear power plants not one death has occurred due to the plant. It is interesting that a scientist mentions that eating one banana gives a person more radiation then drinking all of the water that comes out of a nuclear plant during one day of running.
Chernobyl is an incident that is also mentioned in the movie. Again the actual facts that occurred and what people were told were compared. What the worlds top public health specialists say and what the public believes is on complete different ends of the spectrum. The public thinks that over 1 million people have died because of Chernobyl while the United Nations has published that less than 50 people have died. People went out on rallies complaining about how Chernobyl killed so many and gave cancer to so many more, in fact they were talking and had no idea what they were talking about. Nuclear energy is not even an issue that an educated environmentalist thinks about.
The explanation of how the nuclear power plants are put together and the safety features that need to be taken into consideration are similar to those that were explained to us at the MIT nuclear reactor. Similarly one scientist states that all major nuclear accidents occur because of cooling issues.
Because people do not have the background context and the basic understanding of what radiation actually is they are terrified. Scientists have no way to communicate to the public what is safe for them, and even if they do people will not believe them. People will not trust scientists anymore because they think that they lie to cover up political schemes.
The ultimate argument in the film is that if people were more knowledgable about nuclear power and how it works, they would have a different perception. Nuclear Energy is not the same as a nuclear bomb, but people do not know that. Even though nuclear was first introduced in a form to blow up a city today it is a form to light up a city. The film promotes nuclear energy as most of the scientists that speak are pro-nuclear. I found the film interesting because I also thought of nuclear energy as very dangerous because I always automatically connected it to nuclear weapons.
“Being anti nuclear means that you are in favor of burning fossil fuels, worldwide 3 million people die because of fossil fuel emissions.” That is a very powerful statement that carries a lot of truth. Unfortunately renewable resources like wind and solar cannot make up for the energy produced by fossil fuels so if not fossil fuels then what? Nuclear is a great alternatives and the more people are educated on it I think the more acceptance it will gain.