Oliver Stone has shifted his stance on nuclear power. His documentary "Nuclear Now" examines the director's shift from a skeptic to a backer.
John Bazemore/Associated Press
Oliver Stone believed that nuclear energy was bad for the environment. Then he learned more about the climate crisis.
Now the Oscar-winning director is convinced that nuclear energy is necessary because it doesn't generate the greenhouse-gas emissions that are warming the planet. And nuclear power kills far fewer people than fossil fuels — the main cause of the climate crisis — in terms of air pollution and accidents.
Stone hopes to sway public opinion through his latest documentary, "Nuclear Now."
The film premiered nationally Monday and reflects Stone's journey from nuclear naysayer to supporter. He narrates archival footage of the events that made the public fear the technology: the atomic bombs the US dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, the power-plant disasters in the Soviet Union's Chernobyl and Japan's Fukushima, and an accident on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.
These events distorted the safety risks of nuclear energy, Stone argues, noting that beyond the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, few people have died from nuclear accidents.
The film documents how in countries such as the US and Japan, as nuclear power plants shut down, the power gap was largely filled by coal and natural gas.
Even though more solar panels and wind turbines are being built in places including the US, China, and Europe, those sources of renewable energy are variable and can't meet the growing demand for electricity globally, especially in developing countries, the documentary says.
Nuclear power provides about 10% of global electricity, according to the International Energy Agency.
In the US, a nuclear plant near Waynesboro, Georgia, operated by Georgia Power Co. is expected to soon add capacity. The company said Monday that a second new reactor at the facility had completed a key test and that the unit could begin generating electricity as soon as late this year. Georgia Power has said its project to boost electricity output with the addition of two units would represent the first new nuclear capacity built in the US in three decades.
After a screening Monday in Washington, DC, Stone told the audience that his views on nuclear changed after he read the book "A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow" by Joshua S. Goldstein and Staffan A. Qvist.
Stone worked with Goldstein for about two and half years on "Nuclear Now."
"It was difficult because it's dry material," Stone said. "There's no movie star. I tried to make the film in the sense that I was learning as I was going along."
Stone initially asked Goldstein to write a narrative feature, but it didn't work for such an important topic. Plus, it's expensive to hire actors and market a movie. "I'm the cheapest actor I know," Stone joked.
The filmmaker of American classics such as "Platoon," "Born on the Fourth of July," "Scarface," and "Wall Street" has a reputation for exploring controversial topics, be it John F. Kennedy's assassination or the Vietnam War.
So he isn't fazed by the criticism of "Nuclear Now." Stone told Insider he didn't know that Ralph Nader, who famously campaigned against nuclear power plants, described the documentary as a "propaganda boomerang."
Gregory Jaczko, a former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in an interview with CNBC that the primary problem with nuclear power wasn't fear but the high price tag and a record of poor management.
Goldstein said at the screening that China and South Korea were building reactors on time and on budget, which the US could learn from. He added that nuclear energy had bipartisan support in Congress and was backed by President Joe Biden.
Stone said he hoped the film would "work its way through the consciousness" around the world. But don't expect another climate film from him anytime soon.
"I'd rather not," Stone told Insider. "I'm not a scientist. I've done what I can."
