Atomic Show #259 – David Schumacher The New Fire Movie
David Schumacher is a filmmaker who was inspired to learn more about nuclear energy at a Wired-sponsored event in 2011. That event took place soon after the Fukushima event captured widespread media attention.
During the Wired gathering, he heard Bill Gates talk about his investments in TerraPower and his excitement in being involved in the development of a technology that could help to address climate change, energy supplies, and economic inequalities. Given what he had heard in the media, he realized there was a significant disconnect between perception and reality.
He began an intensive self study effort to find out more. He read, spoke with experts and traveled to places where there was development activity underway.
By early 2015, David had learned enough about nuclear energy to realize that there was a story to tell that was not being told. He had met some “really smart” people who were convinced that there were improvements to be made in the technology that would go a long way in addressing many of the challenges that had slowed development.
He and his long time cameraman decided, over a coffee after a project completion, that it was time to begin working to tell that story.
The New Fire Movie is the product of that collaboration.
Though this is Dave’s first feature length documentary movie as the director, he has deep and broad experience in video production work and story telling. As he explains during our interview, the story of young, bright, energetic people doing really hard things goes way beyond typically dry debates and technical presentations.
It is a human story that should motivate, inspire and excite.
The world premier of The New Fire Movie is just two weeks away. It will be showing at 7:30 pm on Saturday, October 14 at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis, IN. Go to The Heartland Film Festival web site to order tickets.
Have a listen to find out more.
Atomic Insights does not run ads and does not hide behind a paywall. Generous readers like you help to defray costs and provide sustaining income.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:51 — 33.9MB)
Subscribe: RSS
Hmm… browsing their website and schedule, one takes away the distinct impression this Heartland Film Festival outfit shares little in common with Heartland Institute save location.
Link: Heartland Festival website and schedule.
We’ve been down this path before with lots of warning signs even back then. Feel-good-for-pronuker movies are not the way to go to promote nuclear. It takes massive mass media educational PSA/public promotion to break the ice of FUD and outright malicious green media misinformation out there. Publicly call Greenpeace and FOE out on the debate carpet, instantly rebuff nuclear scare reports on the media. THAT’s how you chuck nuclear’s Darth Vader image.Things NEI and ANS are want to do. Don’t let it be said that nuclear engineers are great at numbers but royally fail at calculating human nature.
James Greenidge
Queens NY, where Indian Point is doomed due ZERO self-promotion in a metro area where taxi companies and wedding salons rule the Ad airwaves. Oh yes, where Tyson at the Rose Planetarium makes sure schoolchildren visiting the Planetarium and the Queens Hall of Science (zero NPP exhibits but LOTS of solar and windmills!) leave believing the closest anyone should be near anything nuclear is the sun — no joke..
@James Greenidge
Please take a look at my recent post on Forbes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rodadams/2017/09/30/nuclear-power-the-extraordinary-new-ad-campaign-touting-marvels-of-atomic-technology/#10dbf4372ef5
I’ve heard that New York will be seeing some of these ads.
It will be coming to Atomic Insights this week.
Regrettably, I’m not going to hold my breath for another pro-nuke movie and Ads which historically proven won’t turn the public’s opinion and image of nuclear one iota. I’d rather sit up to hear a high rep from ANS and NEI explain why they haven’t taken aggressive promotion measures like publicly calling out Greenpeace and FOE to a nearly free YouTube debate and are not even the Rolodex at the media as nuclear-side spokespeople for nuclear events. I don’t want to puke out laughing if they talk about “it’s too expensive” when here in NYC metro taxi companies and wedding salons and Puppy Rescue are all over the Ad airwaves here unless one’s implying Puppy Rescue’s got far larger Ad coffers than the combined treasury and brainpower of ANS and NEI. Explains why nuclear’s name is still in the toilet. I can imagine the bitter regret of such as former VY employees have about keeping politely mum and low-key while the antis rioted and eventually took their jobs and homes way too long. No wonder supposedly nuke supporters (on paper) like Gates and Musk only mention anything nuke in open public once a blue moon. Remember Deepwater Horizon…
James Greenidge
Queens NY
@James Greenidge
I understand your frustration, but I’m getting to the point where I’ve heard enough complaining. What are you DOING to change the situation besides filling comment sections?
James,
I am always happy to hear from you! It has been too long.
In my book, “Campaigning for Clear Air, Strategies for Pro-Nuclear Advocacy,” I have a section on what ordinary people can do that the nuclear plants actually can’t do. For example. The nuclear companies can’t send people to take part in debates with the antis: it’s too dangerous for the company if their representative says something a little off. If they say something wrong, it can be used against the company.
But I can take part in debates. I can say what I want. I work hard to be completely factual, but I am hardly someone that it is worth suing if I say something wrong. Third party advocates can do all sorts of things that companies can’t do.
I understand your frustration. I totally admit that people in the nuclear industry should be doing more. No disagreement there. But I hope to do what I can do.
I think James has been making a good point for quite a while. If we really want to reach the public, some affordable TV ads should be run. If all these PI law firms can show me a commercial fifty times a day, surely someone interested in preserving nuclear power can get an ad on TV. It won’t be on prime time on one of the three major networks, but targeted ads on local channels where reactors need saving, or even targeted ads on daytime TV on major network channels appear to be affordable, given who you see filling those advertising slots.
@Jeff Walther
We’re thinking along the same lines. As noted in my Forbes article, which will be republished here in another day or so, I conclude with the following:
If anyone is interested in running ads and has a moderate budget for doing so, I can connect you with the right contacts at NEI.
You have a point James , but Rod & Meredith are correct in pointing out :-
1/ limited advertising/PR budget of nuclear sector vis a vis oil n gas ( especially ‘ natural ‘ gas )
2/ workers in the sector are very constrained in terms of what they say, hence it’s up to civil activists like ourselves to make the case
You have to remember there is no Nuclear ‘ industry ‘ , in the same way there is an oil & gas sector. There are just utilities that own nuclear, coal , gas , Hydro & renewable generators. Oil companies benefit from being
1/ mostly vertically integrated from exploration tru’ to retail
2/ being the essential encumbent in transportation for over 109 years
While ‘ natural ‘ gas companies have similar embedded themselves in i.e
3/ domestic , commercial & industrial heat services
while
4/ benefiting from essentially self-regulation ( think API , ANSI/AGA codes ) , or at most ‘ industrial level ‘ regulation ,along with the free use of the atmosphere to dump their waste with NO consequences
5/ the implicit support of the renewables sector in pairing for backup
6/ support from the enviro / NGO groups
I don’t think you need me to list the converse – what the nuclear energy sector faces
Foley:
Respectfully, I don’t buy that. Here in NYC I’ve been watching a parade of Puppy Rescue and 777-Limo cab commercials for years in the same space of time that hasn’t seen ONE pro-Indian Point or nuclear Ad here. Zit. Nada. This is not merely MIA PR, it shows a sorry of lack of PR initiative and self-preservation and guts. Forget wallflowers ANS and NEI or your parent energy company’s cool support; where the heck is the Atomic Workers Union (dues, dues, dues!) and other nuclear associations that supposedly have skin and jobs at risk in this game? If I was a VY and IP worker among the growing shuttered list I’d be chomping bullets of just where the hell are all my established advocates are/were instead of leaving these poor doomed nuke workers holding pitiful signs in the streets left swinging in the breeze by themselves! While ANS and NEI cluck over the great triumph of getting Girl Scout troops nuclear merit badges in Okie-Konkowie, school kids are singing green and baddie-nuke everywhere while NPPs are being smeared and trounced by technically “neutral” media and science museums and sci TV shows and educators and even librarians with unabashed anti-nuclear pro-green views (Queens has one of the top top three library systems in the nation and regularly host “green power” exhibits its branches and the Hall of Science here but don’t look for any nukes anywhere!). I’m not ranking on Rod. In fact I think if the PR deadwood at ANS and NEI were shoved out (ask VY workers sans homes whether that’s too harsh) and Rod were perched at the helm the fortunes of nuclear energy’s image would do a 180 in a month.
Sadly Rod’s position is at most a sterling dogged nuke blog cheerleader here and not a nuclear organ captain with the buttons and coffers to get things done. Part of that is that if one idea has proven not to work changing public images of nuclear power then DON’T try it again! Is it a wonder that except for the nuker workers and their families themselves NO ONE is crying or lamenting about losing NPPs anywhere? Nuclear’s unopposed monster image is pretty bad when moms prefer inhaling Gas and Oil fumes over electing a nuke next door, so don’t look for any nukes moving in even as emergency power at disaster sites. Long Island and Cape Cod / Martha’s Vineland said as much if another bad hurricane hits..
James Greenidge
Queens NY on Indian Point (and maybe Toms River) deathwatch
James Greenidge,
I fully agree with you on most counts, and am happy to see that NEI is finally taking a broader outreach stance on pushing nuclear and its many positives, while at the same time we have only heard negative things about it for years and years.
It’s about time the industry starts to react, and to tell the world about the many positives created by exploiting technologies such as nuclear.
At the same time, I disagree with the juxtaposition between nuclear and fossil fuels energy industry, as it only does damage to the image of both, and lets the environmentalists, the real enemies of mankind’s progress thru the use of energy, keep the moral high ground.
Ever since I read “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” in 2014, I changed my position about nuclear to a more cautious one, especially because by seeing the huge attacks against fossil fuels, it is understandable that support for nuclear was a waste of time, as it’s such a small industry compared to oil and gas, and if oil and gas are having issues with this anti-human attack and cannot even seem to justify their existence, in spite of the major benefits that fossil fuels give us every single second of our life, then the battle for nuclear is lost by default.
Alex Epstein has been digging deeper and deeper into the real philosophical issues behind this “moral high ground” aspect, and recently was a guest on a podcast where over the course of one hour he has laid very deep thoughts in general on the importance of nuclear energy moving forward, linking it to the new “human flourishing project” he has been working on for a while, where the anti-human stance is obliterated by a positive and clear pro-human and pro human flourishing position, which necessarily includes fossil fuels today, and nuclear today and tomorrow, but a new nuclear, a nuclear which has not yet been tried because even “bold” entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk take for granted the anti-human and pro-environment position, as if the two are one opposed to the other.
And they are NOT.
I am more and more convinced that the thoughts expressed by Alex Epstein are the only way we can save the energy industry, but really all of our society moving forward, if we agree that the anti-human position put forward by the environmentalists is the real enemy.
https://www.authorhour.co/alex-epstein-moral-case-fossil-fuels/