Name: Oliver Stone Pushes Back Against Fears Over Nuclear Power
Uploaded: 2023-05-30T18:23:52.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Oliver Stone Pushes Back Against Fears Over Nuclear Power' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Oliver Stone Pushes Back Against Fears Over Nuclear Power' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-30. Transcript available.

I'm really glad how you covered it in this documentary about Three 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 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. It is. It's stunning. And then when you cut to, in the documentary
you
showed the anti-nuclear movement that happened after Three Mile Island and how
crazy it was. There'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. Yeah. It was a very successful movement. You're talking
about
the negatives here and the accidents and 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 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
how it
got developed, 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 for 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 it. They rushed it and they did an amazing job, Oppenheimer,
down in Los Alamos.
But, 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, it was, a bomb is
very difficult to build
and it takes a lot, 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 you become Spider-Man.
You know, it's incredible,
the stuff that happens. And it's all, and it's Hollywood has done no favors to
it. It's continued for
years and years and years and years. And then of course you had Three Mile
Island. The film was
coming out at the same time, China Syndrome, and with Jane Fonda. It was a good
film. I enjoyed it. We
all enjoyed it, but it really was hysterical and alarmist. And nothing happened
at Three Mile Island
except the reactor did melt down, but nobody got hurt because the containment
structure worked
to keep it in to keep it in. So there was no release of radiation. And they
continued on. Silkwood was
another one. And then if you remember not too long ago, there was the HBO thing,
Chernobyl, 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 one Japanese.
They checked the whole
thing out and it's been done to death. But you hear about 15, 20,000 people
died from the tsunami
and the earthquake, which is the biggest earthquake Japan ever had. I mean,
really we show the earthquake,
we show the tsunami, the wave was a hundred feet tall. There was a badly built
wall. The wall was
not a sea wall that could hold and the generators were flooded beneath the
water. And 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, uh, everything gets better. I mean, yeah, but even those, those, uh,
nuclear reactors built 60,
70 years ago are still functioning. They're legacy reactors. They do work. Yeah.
And we mustn't dismiss
them. Yeah. It gets better than technology gets better. Like as in any business,
and there's another
generation and it's better, but hopefully better. But, uh, the point was that
they could avoid what
happened in Fukushima today. Well, Fukushima was, if you, if you look at the
case closely,
Japan had built, uh, 20 some reactors at that point. And this one is the only
one, 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 one, this, uh, plant was, uh, was the only one that was
shaken up. And even then,
all the radiation that was released, there was a hydrogen explosion, all that
radiation released
in the air. You heard about it. It was supposed to be another terrible. Well,
they, 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, uh, 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.
There's radiation in this room. It's, it's, it's, uh, you get radiation from
eating a banana.
I think what you said is so, it's so true that films and, um, and, and comic
books and are fictions
of radiation. That's part of the problem. Yeah. That started early in the fifties.
It's a giant
problem because comic books and all that. 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.
Uh, uh, and there is still a bias against nuclear, if you mentioned it to
anybody.
Yeah, it's scary instantly. And it's, yeah, but the point is we can live with
it and we have to,
because we're facing Armageddon, we're facing a very difficult situation, a
cliff that we're going
to 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 have, and the
Russians are way ahead of
us. They've 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, uh, as a result,
well, China is really
cutting out now because they have about 70 reactors, uh, approximately 70
reactors. Yeah, about 74, I think.
Anyway, they're building. And I've heard, uh, I can't, uh, 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
going to build 150 some reactors over the next, uh, by 2038. That is a serious
investment, serious
investment. Wow. 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,
well, we have- Even if it's not competing, just to do, just to be current. Yeah.
So they're the
leader right now in it. Well, no, uh, we're the biggest country in the world.
We still have 90 some
reactors online. So China's climate goals hinge on a $440 billion nuclear build
out. That's interesting. So we
have, we still have more, even with all the negative stereotypes about nuclear
reactors.
Planning on at least 150 new reactors in the next 15 years. 150, yeah. More
than the rest of the
world has built in the past 35. That's great. Wow. That's, I'm surprised you
remember. No, it just says
it right there in the article. Oh, okay. Jamie just had it pulled up. China, uh,
has, wow, you got a system
worked out. Yeah. Jamie's the wizard. Look at him over there. He's the best. He
doesn't know what this film is
about. But, uh, this, uh, this, uh, article that you just pulled up, Jamie,
this is from, uh, Bloomberg.
Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah. Well, you see, you got the source right away. Yeah. And
this is from 2021.
Um, 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.
China's building, man. They don't fuck around. Now they have a lot of coal.
They still, they're
still building coal plants 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,
um, a documentary that had
been done. Do you remember the documentary? No, but I remember it was, it was a
documentary.
It was all about, um, one 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, in the atmosphere. That's great.
It's horrible.
They estimate from air pollution alone. I've read figures of 4 million deaths a
year. It's just so
many. You need so many cases of, you know, respiratory illnesses and it's
horrible. 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 really. 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, or the plants
rather. It's horrible.
Well, we still have coal in the U S. Yeah, no, this was in the U S. This was in
Indiana, correct?
Oh yeah. They have coal everywhere. I mean, President Trump said, uh, Trump digs
coal. I dig coal.
He said clean coal once was just like, what the fuck are you saying? The fuck
are you saying cleaner
than what? Lighting tires? Now the other, uh, truth that we miss is gas. Now 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, uh, gas is
considered, they're using gas
everywhere. Uh, even it seems like a modern thing. They say, well, renewables,
which is solar and, uh,
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 with battery
technology when it comes to
those? 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, uh, gas does, I mean, uh, renewables do need
backup and that backup is gas.
So it's not a hundred percent like the one of the, one of the issues is about,
uh, storage, the waste.
Yeah. And when you talked about just the, the size of the amount of storage, it's
not nearly as much
as a lot of people think it is. Oh, the amount of, we, uh, it's all the waste
that we, America has
used up to now in the last, since the 1958, whenever shipping port 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, uh, how do you say it compact as a result. So it fits into it. If
waste itself is, is,
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 two, three years. And
that's a conductor
that takes, 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, uh, is a great, uh, does not conduct, uh, radioactivity. Concrete
stops it. So concrete
and, and steel, get casks work. They can go for a hundred years and then you
can do another hundred
years. And then eventually, eventually you realize that radioactivity drops
each time. In four or five
years, it's way down. It tops to almost, if you, I don't have all the figures,
but you can see that
it's, it's a ridiculous fear given compared to what given climate change is so
dangerous.
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 have died from nuclear, it's very,
very small.

Oliver Stone Pushes Back Against Fears Over Nuclear Power

I'm really glad how you covered it in this documentary about Three 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 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. It is. It's stunning. And then when you cut to, in the documentary
you
showed the anti-nuclear movement that happened after Three Mile Island and how
crazy it was. There'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. Yeah. It was a very successful movement. You're talking
about
the negatives here and the accidents and 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 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
how it
got developed, 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 for 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 it. They rushed it and they did an amazing job, Oppenheimer,
down in Los Alamos.
But, 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, it was, a bomb is
very difficult to build
and it takes a lot, 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 you become Spider-Man.
You know, it's incredible,
the stuff that happens. And it's all, and it's Hollywood has done no favors to
it. It's continued for
years and years and years and years. And then of course you had Three Mile
Island. The film was
coming out at the same time, China Syndrome, and with Jane Fonda. It was a good
film. I enjoyed it. We
all enjoyed it, but it really was hysterical and alarmist. And nothing happened
at Three Mile Island
except the reactor did melt down, but nobody got hurt because the containment
structure worked
to keep it in to keep it in. So there was no release of radiation. And they
continued on. Silkwood was
another one. And then if you remember not too long ago, there was the HBO thing,
Chernobyl, 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 one Japanese.
They checked the whole
thing out and it's been done to death. But you hear about 15, 20,000 people
died from the tsunami
and the earthquake, which is the biggest earthquake Japan ever had. I mean,
really we show the earthquake,
we show the tsunami, the wave was a hundred feet tall. There was a badly built
wall. The wall was
not a sea wall that could hold and the generators were flooded beneath the
water. And 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, uh, everything gets better. I mean, yeah, but even those, those, uh,
nuclear reactors built 60,
70 years ago are still functioning. They're legacy reactors. They do work. Yeah.
And we mustn't dismiss
them. Yeah. It gets better than technology gets better. Like as in any business,
and there's another
generation and it's better, but hopefully better. But, uh, the point was that
they could avoid what
happened in Fukushima today. Well, Fukushima was, if you, if you look at the
case closely,
Japan had built, uh, 20 some reactors at that point. And this one is the only
one, 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 one, this, uh, plant was, uh, was the only one that was
shaken up. And even then,
all the radiation that was released, there was a hydrogen explosion, all that
radiation released
in the air. You heard about it. It was supposed to be another terrible. Well,
they, 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, uh, 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.
There's radiation in this room. It's, it's, it's, uh, you get radiation from
eating a banana.
I think what you said is so, it's so true that films and, um, and, and comic
books and are fictions
of radiation. That's part of the problem. Yeah. That started early in the fifties.
It's a giant
problem because comic books and all that. 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.
Uh, uh, and there is still a bias against nuclear, if you mentioned it to
anybody.
Yeah, it's scary instantly. And it's, yeah, but the point is we can live with
it and we have to,
because we're facing Armageddon, we're facing a very difficult situation, a
cliff that we're going
to 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 have, and the
Russians are way ahead of
us. They've 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, uh, as a result,
well, China is really
cutting out now because they have about 70 reactors, uh, approximately 70
reactors. Yeah, about 74, I think.
Anyway, they're building. And I've heard, uh, I can't, uh, 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
going to build 150 some reactors over the next, uh, by 2038. That is a serious
investment, serious
investment. Wow. 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,
well, we have- Even if it's not competing, just to do, just to be current. Yeah.
So they're the
leader right now in it. Well, no, uh, we're the biggest country in the world.
We still have 90 some
reactors online. So China's climate goals hinge on a $440 billion nuclear build
out. That's interesting. So we
have, we still have more, even with all the negative stereotypes about nuclear
reactors.
Planning on at least 150 new reactors in the next 15 years. 150, yeah. More
than the rest of the
world has built in the past 35. That's great. Wow. That's, I'm surprised you
remember. No, it just says
it right there in the article. Oh, okay. Jamie just had it pulled up. China, uh,
has, wow, you got a system
worked out. Yeah. Jamie's the wizard. Look at him over there. He's the best. He
doesn't know what this film is
about. But, uh, this, uh, this, uh, article that you just pulled up, Jamie,
this is from, uh, Bloomberg.
Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah. Well, you see, you got the source right away. Yeah. And
this is from 2021.
Um, 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.
China's building, man. They don't fuck around. Now they have a lot of coal.
They still, they're
still building coal plants 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,
um, a documentary that had
been done. Do you remember the documentary? No, but I remember it was, it was a
documentary.
It was all about, um, one 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, in the atmosphere. That's great.
It's horrible.
They estimate from air pollution alone. I've read figures of 4 million deaths a
year. It's just so
many. You need so many cases of, you know, respiratory illnesses and it's
horrible. 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 really. 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, or the plants
rather. It's horrible.
Well, we still have coal in the U S. Yeah, no, this was in the U S. This was in
Indiana, correct?
Oh yeah. They have coal everywhere. I mean, President Trump said, uh, Trump digs
coal. I dig coal.
He said clean coal once was just like, what the fuck are you saying? The fuck
are you saying cleaner
than what? Lighting tires? Now the other, uh, truth that we miss is gas. Now 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, uh, gas is
considered, they're using gas
everywhere. Uh, even it seems like a modern thing. They say, well, renewables,
which is solar and, uh,
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 with battery
technology when it comes to
those? 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, uh, gas does, I mean, uh, renewables do need
backup and that backup is gas.
So it's not a hundred percent like the one of the, one of the issues is about,
uh, storage, the waste.
Yeah. And when you talked about just the, the si