Taken from JRE #1992 w/Oliver Stone:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4hfegsO5ppgNhifrS2UO6D?si=c6a61857a0ba4894

I'm really glad how you covered it in this documentary about 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl and Fukushima.

We have these ideas in our mind about the dangers of nuclear power and I love the analogy that you made in the film about how driving a car is not scary but it's dangerous.

Flying in a plane feels scary but it's far safer.

And this is a great analogy to nuclear power.

When you went over the the data when you talked about the amount of deaths from coal every year when you talk about The amount of deaths overall ever from nuclear.

it's stunning and then when you cut to in the documentary you showed the anti nuclear movement that happened after 3 Mile Island.

It's all these stars and celebrities and they're doing concerts.

We've got to stop nuclear power and what a mess.

That happens when a fad, I mean, becomes fashionable.

You're talking about the negatives here and the accidents.

We cover all that in the film, which is called Nuclear Now.

And the idea that was behind it was because I really was like you.

I went along with those things in the 70s and the 80s because

I really wanted to know what is nuclear power.

And you've got to go back to the beginning.

And you've got to go back to Marie Curie and Albert Einstein and World War II and all how it got developed.

This nuclear energy is a beautiful, incredible, almost a miracle that was given to us.

We have an Earth, it's all, it's in the Earth, uranium, it's everywhere, the planet, the Earth, the sun.

And we, in a sense, we took it like Prometheus and we kind of misinterpreted it, misused it, which is kind of normal given what we do with natural things.

World War II was happening just as the nuclear fission was being understood, and that made the bomb.

They made the bomb with it because there was a war on.

They rushed it and they did an amazing job, Oppenheimer, down in Los Alamos, and they got it and they were successful.

But as you know, it was misunderstood at that point that nuclear energy was not nuclear bomb.

In the contrary, a bomb is very difficult to build, and it takes years sometimes.

It takes scientists, and they have to enrich the plutonium and they have to work at it.

There's all configurations in the bomb that don't exist in nuclear energy.

So when people see a nuclear energy plant, they subconsciously, they cross it with both war and they cross it with horror films that they've seen in the 1950s with radioactivity and monsters that come out of that.

You know, a spider bites the man and he becomes Spider-Man.

It's incredible the stuff that happens and it's all, and Hollywood has done no favors to it.

It's continued for years and years and years and then Of course, you had 3 Mile Island.

The film was coming out at the same time China syndrome and with Jane Fonda was a good film.

I enjoyed it We all enjoyed it, but it really was hysterical and alarmist.

Nothing happened at 3 Mile Island except the reactor did melt down, but nobody got hurt because the containment structure worked to keep it in.

Silkwood was another 1, and then, if you remember, not too long ago, there was the H.P.

Which was a complete fictionalization of what happened at Chernobyl.

So we went to Russia and we talked to the scientists there and we wanted to know what happened at Chernobyl and we find out and it's in the film.

And the same thing is true for Fukushima, which is unbelievable because when you go to the bottom of it, I was astounded to find out that nobody died there from radiation.

They checked the whole thing out and it's been done to death.

But you hear about 15,000, 20,000 people died from the tsunami and the earthquake, which was the biggest earthquake Japan ever had.

I mean, really, we show the earthquake, we show the tsunami, the wave was 100 feet tall.

The wall was not a seawall that could hold and the generators were flooded beneath the water and and these are these were also not state-of-the-art

that's right it's like what they can do now in terms of these power plants

no the everything gets better I mean yeah but even those those nuclear reactors built 60, 70 years ago are still functioning.

Technology gets better, as in any business.

And there's another generation, it's better, hopefully better.

The point was that they could avoid what happened in Fukushima today.

Oh, Fukushima was, if you look at it closely, Japan had built 20 some reactors at that point and this 1 is the only 1, the others were exposed to the same earthquake and the same kind of tsunami.

Several of them were on that same coastline but this particular 1, this plant was the only 1 that was shaken up.

And even then, all the radiation that was released, there was a hydrogen explosion.

That radiation released in the air, you heard about it, it was supposed to be another turmoil.

Well, we have shots in the film showing they're taking tests on all the Japanese citizens and nobody can, you know, it's low-level, what they call low-level radiation, which is, we can sustain it.

We have our, we have DNA in our body that Fixes, repairs our body as each day goes by.

But it's also, you point out very well in the film, that there's a lot of radiation that you don't even take into consideration that you encounter constantly.

We have this idea of radiation as being a net negative.

It's it's it's you get radiation from eating a banana

I think what you said is so it's so true that films and and comic books and our Fictions of radiation that's part of the problem.

it plays to the worst aspects of human nature which is we just love to get terrified about headlines so we don't read into the devil of the details

exactly that's what was confusing to me and I really you know we're miseducated And there is still a bias against nuclear, if you mention it to anybody.

Yeah, but the point is we can live with it, and we have to, because we're facing a very difficult situation, a cliff that we're gonna go over.

And it seems that no one's really getting it.

So that's why I felt like the film, I wanted to know, I need to educate myself.

So in doing the film, I think I was able to bring out these things you talk about, what is wrong with nuclear energy?

It can work, it is a miracle, we should use it.

The Chinese and the Russians are way ahead of us.

They built this, they built it, and they built it with government backing, not like the US where we kind of back it but we don't really back it.

So as a result, well China is really cutting out now because they have about 70 reactors, approximately 70 reactors, yeah about 74 I think.

Anyway they're building and I've heard, I can't, I don't remember the source, but I did hear that they're putting another $140 billion into this thing, which means that they're gonna build 150 some reactors over the next, by 2038.

That is a serious investment, serious investment.

That's a serious investment that would take a long time for us to catch up to.

Oh, it's not about competing, it's about.

Right, but if we wanted to do what they're doing right now

even if it's not competing just to do just to be current.

it Well, no, we're the biggest country in the world.

So China's climate goals hinge on a $440 billion nuclear buildout.

So we still have more, even with all the negative stereotypes about nuclear reactors.

Planning at least 150 new reactors in the next 15 years.

More than the rest of the world has built in the past 35

that's Wow That's I'm surprised you remember China has you got a system work out.

Yeah, Jamie's the wizard look at him over there.

you this This article that you just pulled up Jamie.

Yeah, well you see you got the source right away.

Yeah, this is from 2021 It's this this whole thing.

It's it is exactly how you lay it out in the film.

It's almost like we have to cure ourselves of these misconceptions.

China's building, man, they don't fuck around.

They still they're still building coal plants, right?

Because they have a huge demand and they have to get off the coal That is crucial because they are completely contaminating the atmosphere as well the more nuclear they build the better it will be

the contamination from coal is terrifying We showed a documentary that had been done with do you remember the documentary?

1 of the things that was highlighting is all the people that live around these plants and the air quality that they suffer.

Their cars are covered with like a thin film of, you know, all the particulates in the atmosphere.

They estimate from air pollution alone, I've read figures of 4 million deaths a year.

It's just so many cases of respiratory illnesses.

I want to say 4 million a year from Air pollution, but 1 million at least from coal a year That's what I've seen but there could be more coal in the so it's and

who knows what the the health Negatives are on top of that like how many people are suffering with illnesses and ailments because of those particles especially around those reactors or the plants rather.

I mean, President Trump said, Trump digs coal.

I was just like, what the fuck are you saying?

I mean, there's the waste and all the oil.

And this fossil fuel itself is destroying the universe because we're putting carbon into the atmosphere co2 but gas is Considered they're using gas everywhere Even it seems like a modern thing.

They say well Renewables, which is solar and wind those are we're all for that.

with battery technology when it comes to those things?

Well, that's part of it too, but the point is, when they run out, what they need is gas backup.

You see, nuclear doesn't need storage and it doesn't need backup.

And gas does, I mean, renewables do need backup.

So it's not 100%, like, 1 of the issues is about storage, the waste.

And when you talked about just the size of the amount of storage, it's not nearly as much as a lot of people think it

All the waste that America has used up to now and the last since 1958, whenever Shippingport was built, has amounts to about the size of Walmart, frankly.

In other words, people make a big deal about waste, but they don't realize that it's so intensive, and energy, huge amount of energy that it's, it's, how do you say, compact as a result.

So it fits into, if waste itself is a positive about nuclear, because first of all, there's been no harm done.

And first of all, it goes into water for maybe 2, 3 years.

And that's a conductor that takes the radioactivity down.

And then it gets put into casks that are 12 to 14 feet.

They build these casks in the United States.

They can go for 100 years, and then you can go another 100 years.

And then eventually, eventually, you realize that radioactivity drops each time.

I don't have all the figures but you can see that it's a ridiculous fear compared to what?

And compared to the deaths that are already occurring every year just from using the methods we have now, in comparison to the amount of people that died from nuclear, it's very very small.


Speaker 0: The Jorogun Experience.

Speaker 1: I'm really glad how you covered it in this documentary about 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl and Fukushima. We have these ideas in our mind about the dangers of nuclear power and I love the analogy that you made in the film about how driving a car is not scary but it's dangerous. Flying in a plane feels scary but it's far safer. Yeah. And this is a great analogy to nuclear power.

When you went over the the data when you talked about the amount of deaths from coal every year when you talk about The amount of deaths overall ever from nuclear. It's it's stunning

Speaker 0: It is

Speaker 1: it's stunning and then when you cut to in the documentary you showed the anti nuclear movement that happened after 3 Mile Island. Yeah. And how crazy it was. It's all these stars and celebrities and they're doing concerts. We've got to stop nuclear power and what a mess.

Speaker 0: That happens when a fad, I mean, becomes fashionable.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It

Speaker 0: was a very successful movement. You're talking about the negatives here and the accidents. We cover all that in the film, which is called Nuclear Now. And the idea that was behind it was because I really was like you. I went along with those things in the 70s and the 80s because

Speaker 1: I

Speaker 0: didn't know better. I wasn't educated. I really wanted to know what is nuclear power. I wanted to go back to the source. And you've got to go back to the beginning.

And you've got to go back to Marie Curie and Albert Einstein and World War II and all how it got developed. This nuclear energy is a beautiful, incredible, almost a miracle that was given to us. We have an Earth, it's all, it's in the Earth, uranium, it's everywhere, the planet, the Earth, the sun. And we, in a sense, we took it like Prometheus and we kind of misinterpreted it, misused it, which is kind of normal given what we do with natural things. World War II was happening just as the nuclear fission was being understood, and that made the bomb.

They made the bomb with it because there was a war on. They rushed it and they did an amazing job, Oppenheimer, down in Los Alamos, and they got it and they were successful. But as you know, it was misunderstood at that point that nuclear energy was not nuclear bomb. In the contrary, a bomb is very difficult to build, and it takes years sometimes. It takes scientists, and they have to enrich the plutonium and they have to work at it.

There's all configurations in the bomb that don't exist in nuclear energy. So when people see a nuclear energy plant, they subconsciously, they cross it with both war and they cross it with horror films that they've seen in the 1950s with radioactivity and monsters that come out of that. You know, a spider bites the man and he becomes Spider-Man. It's incredible the stuff that happens and it's all, and Hollywood has done no favors to it. It's continued for years and years and years and then Of course, you had 3 Mile Island.

The film was coming out at the same time China syndrome and with Jane Fonda was a good film. I enjoyed it We all enjoyed it, but it really was hysterical and alarmist. Nothing happened at 3 Mile Island except the reactor did melt down, but nobody got hurt because the containment structure worked to keep it in. So there was no release of radiation. They continued on.

Silkwood was another 1, and then, if you remember, not too long ago, there was the H.P. Elick thing, Chernobyl. Yeah. Which was a complete fictionalization of what happened at Chernobyl. So we went to Russia and we talked to the scientists there and we wanted to know what happened at Chernobyl and we find out and it's in the film.

And the same thing is true for Fukushima, which is unbelievable because when you go to the bottom of it, I was astounded to find out that nobody died there from radiation. Not 1 Japanese. They checked the whole thing out and it's been done to death. But you hear about 15,000, 20,000 people died from the tsunami and the earthquake, which was the biggest earthquake Japan ever had. I mean, really, we show the earthquake, we show the tsunami, the wave was 100 feet tall.

There was a badly built wall. The wall was not a seawall that could hold and the generators were flooded beneath the water and and these are these were also not state-of-the-art

Speaker 1: that's right it's like what they can do now in terms of these power plants

Speaker 0: no the everything gets better I mean yeah but even those those nuclear reactors built 60, 70 years ago are still functioning. They're legacy reactors. They do work. And we mustn't dismiss them. Yeah, it gets better.

Technology gets better, as in any business. And there's another generation, it's better, hopefully better.

Speaker 1: The point was that they could avoid what happened in Fukushima today.

Speaker 0: Oh, Fukushima was, if you look at it closely, Japan had built 20 some reactors at that point and this 1 is the only 1, the others were exposed to the same earthquake and the same kind of tsunami. Several of them were on that same coastline but this particular 1, this plant was the only 1 that was shaken up. And even then, all the radiation that was released, there was a hydrogen explosion. That radiation released in the air, you heard about it, it was supposed to be another turmoil. Well, we have shots in the film showing they're taking tests on all the Japanese citizens and nobody can, you know, it's low-level, what they call low-level radiation, which is, we can sustain it.

We have our, we have DNA in our body that Fixes, repairs our body as each day goes by. We...

Speaker 1: But it's also, you point out very well in the film, that there's a lot of radiation that you don't even take into consideration that you encounter constantly. We have this idea of radiation as being a net negative. It's a terrible thing. But it's just a thing. You get it from being outside.

You get it from rocks. You get it from all sorts of things

Speaker 0: There's radiation in this room. It's it's it's you get radiation from eating a banana

Speaker 1: I think what you said is so it's so true that films and and comic books and our Fictions of radiation that's part of the problem.

Speaker 0: Yeah, it started early

Speaker 1: It's a giant problem

Speaker 0: because comic books and all that

Speaker 1: it plays to the worst aspects of human nature which is we just love to get terrified about headlines so we don't read into the devil of the details

Speaker 0: exactly that's what was confusing to me and I really you know we're miseducated And there is still a bias against nuclear, if you mention it to anybody. Yeah, it's scary, instantly. Yeah, but the point is we can live with it, and we have to, because we're facing a very difficult situation, a cliff that we're gonna go over. And it seems that no one's really getting it. So that's why I felt like the film, I wanted to know, I need to educate myself.

So in doing the film, I think I was able to bring out these things you talk about, what is wrong with nuclear energy? It can work, it is a miracle, we should use it. And we should use it abundantly. The Chinese and the Russians are way ahead of us. They built this, they built it, and they built it with government backing, not like the US where we kind of back it but we don't really back it.

So as a result, well China is really cutting out now because they have about 70 reactors, approximately 70 reactors, yeah about 74 I think. Anyway they're building and I've heard, I can't, I don't remember the source, but I did hear that they're putting another $140 billion into this thing, which means that they're gonna build 150 some reactors over the next, by 2038. That is a serious investment, serious investment. Wow.

Speaker 1: That's a serious investment that would take a long time for us to catch up to.

Speaker 0: Oh, it's not about competing, it's about.

Speaker 1: Right, but if we wanted to do what they're doing right now

Speaker 0: Well, we have

Speaker 1: even if it's not competing just to do just to be current. Yeah, so they're the leader right now in

Speaker 0: it Well, no, we're the biggest country in the world. We still have 90 some reactors online

Speaker 1: So China's climate goals hinge on a $440 billion nuclear buildout. That's interesting. So we still have more, even with all the negative stereotypes about nuclear reactors. Planning at least 150 new reactors in the next 15 years. More than the rest of the world has built in the past 35

Speaker 0: that's Wow That's I'm surprised you remember China has you got a system work out.

Speaker 1: Yeah, Jamie's the wizard look at him over there. He's the best

Speaker 0: he doesn't know what this is about

Speaker 1: you this This article that you just pulled up Jamie. This is from Bloomberg

Speaker 0: Yeah, well you see you got the source right away.

Speaker 1: Yeah, this is from 2021 It's this this whole thing. It's it is exactly how you lay it out in the film. It's almost like we have to cure ourselves of these misconceptions. And if we don't, we're screwed.

Speaker 0: China's building, man, they don't fuck around. Now, They have a lot of coal. They still they're still building coal plants, right? Because they have a huge demand and they have to get off the coal That is crucial because they are completely contaminating the atmosphere as well the more nuclear they build the better it will be

Speaker 1: the contamination from coal is terrifying We showed a documentary that had been done with do you remember the documentary? It was a documentary Who's all about? 1 of the things that was highlighting is all the people that live around these plants and the air quality that they suffer. It's insane. Their cars are covered with like a thin film of, you know, all the particulates in the atmosphere.

That's correct. It's horrible.

Speaker 0: They estimate from air pollution alone, I've read figures of 4 million deaths a year.

Speaker 1: It's just so many cases of respiratory illnesses. It's horrible.

Speaker 0: I want to say 4 million a year from Air pollution, but 1 million at least from coal a year That's what I've seen but there could be more coal in the so it's and

Speaker 1: who knows what the the health Negatives are on top of that like how many people are suffering with illnesses and ailments because of those particles especially around those reactors or the plants rather.

Speaker 0: It's horrible. Well, we still have coal in the US.

Speaker 1: Yeah. No, this was in the US. This was in Indiana, correct?

Speaker 0: Oh yeah, they have coal everywhere. I mean, President Trump said, Trump digs coal. I dig coal.

Speaker 1: He said clean coal once.

Speaker 0: I was just like, what the fuck are you saying?

Speaker 1: The fuck are you saying? Cleaner than what?

Speaker 0: The other... Lighting tires? No, the other truth that we miss is gas. We know how ugly the oil thing is. I mean, there's the waste and all the oil.

And this fossil fuel itself is destroying the universe because we're putting carbon into the atmosphere co2 but gas is Considered they're using gas everywhere Even it seems like a modern thing. They say well Renewables, which is solar and wind those are we're all for that. I want wind, we want solar. But they don't work all the time. They run out in the winter, at night.

Is it also a problem

Speaker 1: with battery technology when it comes to those things?

Speaker 0: Well, that's part of it too, but the point is, when they run out, what they need is gas backup. It's backup. You see, nuclear doesn't need storage and it doesn't need backup. What's the beauty of it? It's a real clean energy.

And gas does, I mean, renewables do need backup. And that backup is gas.

Speaker 1: So it's not 100%, like, 1 of the issues is about storage, the waste. And when you talked about just the size of the amount of storage, it's not nearly as much as a lot of people think it

Speaker 0: is. The amount of... All the waste that America has used up to now and the last since 1958, whenever Shippingport was built, has amounts to about the size of Walmart, frankly. You could put it in a Walmart. In other words, people make a big deal about waste, but they don't realize that it's so intensive, and energy, huge amount of energy that it's, it's, how do you say, compact as a result.

So it fits into, if waste itself is a positive about nuclear, because first of all, there's been no harm done. So it's been buried in casks. And first of all, it goes into water for maybe 2, 3 years. And that's a conductor that takes the radioactivity down. And then it gets put into casks that are 12 to 14 feet.

They build these casks in the United States. They're concrete and steel. Concrete is a great... Does not conduct radioactivity. Concrete stops it.

So concrete and steel casks work. They can go for 100 years, and then you can go another 100 years. And then eventually, eventually, you realize that radioactivity drops each time. In 4 or 5 years it's way down. It tops to almost...

I don't have all the figures but you can see that it's a ridiculous fear compared to what? Given climate change is so dangerous.

Speaker 1: And compared to the deaths that are already occurring every year just from using the methods we have now, in comparison to the amount of people that died from nuclear, it's very very small.

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Oliver Stone Pushes Back Against Fears Over Nuclear Power