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Originally Posted by #-3
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I'll second this, I really enjoyed it. As someone without a well-formed opinion on Nuclear power this documentary was excellent and I'll expand on why:
I especially liked the fact that you start off with Environmentalists who have been campaigning for the end of the use of Coal and Fossil Fuels and a shift towards renewable sources of energy like wind/solar because the information they had suggested that renewable energy sources could generate a sufficient amount of power to the point that we didnt need Fossil Fuels anymore.
And then they show that the 'information' these guys were operating with was more 'hope' than 'fact' and in fact most of the knowledgeable people within the energy industry widely consider wind/solar a complete joke.
They dont generate even remotely the amount of energy people seem to be under the impression they provide, the fiscal cost is exceptionally high, they constantly require a fossil fuel based backup system and ultimately the environmental cost of creating solar panels and batteries is staggering.
People totally ignore the incredibly hazardous process of actually manufacturing solar panels and batteries, its remarkably toxic, they only state that because the panels and batteries are supposed to last a long time that their net environmental effect should hopefully eventually be positive relative to fossil fuels.
Enter Nuclear power. There are risks, Fukushima and Chernobyl are explored in depth but what I particularly found interesting was the explanations on how much actual waste we are talking about, its storage and the consequences thereof.
Further I liked the fact that Nuclear Energy scientists constantly reinforced the fact that what we know of as 'Nuclear Power Plants/Reactors' is merely the tip of the iceberg. There are many different kinds of reactors, and for the sake of economic efficiency and, quite stupidly, marketing, most of the ones that were built were the least safe, least expensive and least inefficient.
There are Nuclear reactor designs out there that generate 1/100th of the waste and do so efficiently enough that they can actually re-use the waste as fuel over and over until its inert.
Really cool documentary.