Atomic Show #305 – Oliver Stone and Joshua Goldstein Co-Writers Nuclear Now
On Apr 28, the much anticipated film, Nuclear Now, will premier in selected theaters in New York, Sedona and Los Angeles. It will remain available in those venues for a week. On May 1, 2023, the film will be shown at 350 theaters across the US and Canada.
The film is co-written by Oliver Stone and Joshua Goldstein. Here is a blurb about the film.
Nuclear Now takes viewers on an educational and thought-provoking journey with legendary director Oliver Stone, as he explores the powerful impact of nuclear energy. The looming climate crisis remains unresolved, and the volume of carbon-free electricity needed over the next 30 years is almost unimaginable. This insightful documentary aims to remove the fears associated with nuclear energy and highlight the sustainability and affordability it can bring in the pursuit of restoring the world’s ecosystems and economies.
I spoke with Oliver and Joshua to delve more deeply into the reasons why they are so passionate about their self-assigned task to correct long held beliefs about nuclear energy. We talk about their personal journeys from being reflexively opposed to nuclear energy to become committed proponents that see nuclear as an important tool for mankind.
Paraphrasing one of Oliver’s observations from our discussion, nuclear energy is a gift, perhaps the greatest gift ever given to man. It is currently one of our greatest missed opportunities. Paraphrasing Joshua, nuclear has proven that it can scale, and scale quickly to make a major contribution towards reducing man-made CO2 while producing high quality, abundant energy.
You can find a list of theaters that will be showing the film here. Almost all of the showings will be on Nuclear Now Day (May 1, 2023), but there are exceptions to this general rule in San Luis Obispo, Breckenridge, Fairfield, Idaho Falls, Martha’s Vineyard, Minneapolis, Columbus, and Dallas.
There is a pretty good chance of finding a venue in most metropolitan areas. Digital versions will be widely available sometime during the summer of 2023.
Here is the Nuclear Now trailer. At the 0:46 mark, you will see and hear me saying one of my favorite words.
Disclosure: I play a modest role in Nuclear Now as one of the interviewed experts.
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So, it was made apparent to me in a reply to a previous comment I made to Atomic Insights that one cannot expect nuclear innovation to occur with the speed we’ve seen for many years by Moore’s Law. As I was listening to the excellent podcast, I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps this applies to pro-nuclear documentaries as well. It’s been 10 years since Pandora’s Promise was released. “An Inconvenient Truth” was released in 2006. Rod Adams has been doing a better job than Hollywood at solving this global warming thing and educating the public about nuclear energy.
I haven’t seen the movie. Does it dig into the actions of the fossil fuel industry to derail nuclear progress? To me, this would be a great story for a Hollywood documentary. The fervor with which the Germans have fled from nuclear was mentioned in the podcast. I’ve learned recently that there was some Russian assistance in influencing the Germans towards that attitude. It was great for natural gas sales. Was this mentioned in the documentary? It seems like this would be a great Hollywood story. The reasons why we haven’t seen the expected growth of nuclear energy could be made into a fascinating movie by themselves.
Eino – no spoilers here, but the topics you mention are at least alluded to in the film.
It was, however, filmed and completed well before February 24, 2022 (that’s the day Russia invaded Ukraine).