Nuclear Fuel Waste Management(1979)

Journey to the Safest Place on Earth(de)

Over 350,000 tons of highly radioactive waste and spent fuel rods are in temporary storage on site at nuclear power complexes and at intermediate storage sites all over the world. More than 10,000 additional tons join them every year. It is the most dangerous waste man has ever produced. Waste that requires storage in a safe final repository for hundreds of thousands of years. Out of reach of humanity and other living creatures. The question is, where? Together with Swiss-British nuclear physicist Charles McCombie, who has been searching for a safe final storage site for highly radioactive nuclear waste for thirty-five years, director Edgar Hagen investigates the limitations and contradictions involved in this project of global significance. Supporters and opponents of nuclear energy struggle for solutions whilst dogmatic worldviews are assailed by doubt

Fission(de)

The climate crisis, Germany’s nuclear phase-out and Russia’s war against Ukraine are just three of the heavy pieces in the dramatic game about the future of energy. Caught in the middle are two small towns with barely a thousand residents each: Gundremmingen in Bavaria, home to a shuttered nuclear plant, and Choczewo on Poland’s Baltic coast, where the country’s first facility is now under construction. What do the good people on the ground think about it all?

Inside Chernobyl with Ben Fogle(en)

Ben Fogle spends a week living inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, gaining privileged access to the doomed Control Room 4 where the disaster first began to unfold.

Uranium Drive-In(en)

A new uranium mill -- the first in the U.S. in 30 years -- would re-connect the economically devastated rural mining community of Naturita, Colorado, to its proud history supplying the material for the first atomic bomb. Some view it as a greener energy source freeing America from its dependence on foreign oil, while others worry about the severe health and environmental consequences of the last uranium boom.

Decommissioning Fukushima 2024: Roadmap on the Brink(en)

Thirteen years since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, the government's plan to decommission the plant is at a crossroads. We take a close look at the efforts to secure Fukushima's future.

Seabrook 1977(en)

In April 1977, the small coastal town of Seabrook, New Hampshire became an international symbol in the battle over atomic energy. Concerned about the dangers of potential radioactive accidents, over 2,000 members of the Clamshell Alliance, a coalition of environmental groups, attempted to block construction of a nuclear power plant. 1,414 people were arrested in that civil disobedience protest and jailed en masse in National Guard armories for two weeks.

Nuclear Now(en)

With unprecedented access to the nuclear industry in France, Russia, and the United States, Nuclear Now explores the possibility for the global community to overcome the challenges of climate change and energy poverty to reach a brighter future through the power of nuclear energy. Beneath our feet, Uranium atoms in the Earth’s crust hold incredibly concentrated energy. Science unlocked this energy in the mid-20th century, first for bombs and then to power submarines. The United States led the effort to generate electricity from this new source. Yet in the mid-20th century as societies began the transition to nuclear power and away from fossil fuels, a long-term PR campaign to scare the public began, funded in part by coal and oil interests.

Sista varningen!(sv)

About the question of whether we should proceed in developing and using nuclear power and the breakdown at Three Mile Island, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in March 28, 1979.

Wolsong: Vanishing Town(ko)

The Battle of Chernobyl(fr)

On April 26, 1986, a 1,000 feet high flame rises into the sky of the Ukraine. The fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant just exploded. A battle begins in which 500,000 men are engaged throughout the Soviet Union to "liquidate" the radioactivity, build the "sarcophagus" of the damaged reactor and save the world from a second explosion that would have destroyed half of Europe. Become a reference film, this documentary combines testimonials and unseen footage, tells for the first time the Battle of Chernobyl.

Elektro-Lähmung - Ein Film gegen die politische Ohnmacht(de)

An initiative discusses a videotape in which a group of activists portrays themselves and their work against the "nuclear power mafia." After argumentatively and polemically confronting the economic and political power of the energy industry, the activists call for the shutdown of escalators to counteract people's electro-paralysis.

Atomic Homefront(en)

Revealing St. Louis, Missouri's atomic past as a uranium processing center for the atomic bomb and the governmental and corporate negligence that lead to the illegal dumping of Manhattan Project radioactive waste throughout North County neighborhoods.

The First Secret City(en)

Before the creation of the secret cities of Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Hanford, the Manhattan Project hired the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works of St. Louis to refine the first uranium used in the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. For the next two decades, Mallinckrodt continued its classified work for the Atomic Energy Commission during the Cold War. The resulting radioactive waste contaminated numerous locations in the St. Louis area some of which have not been cleaned up 70 years after the end of World War II. Told through the eyes of an overexposed worker, the story expands through a series of interviews that careen down a toxic pathway leading to a fiery terminus at a smoldering, radioactively-contaminated landfill. The First Secret City reveals a forgotten history and its continuing impact on the community in the 21st Century, uncovering past wrongdoing and documenting the renewed struggles to confront the issue.

Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island(en)

In this thrilling documentary, indomitable women fight back against the nuclear industry to expose one of the biggest cover-ups in US history: the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown and its aftermath. The film reveals the never-before-told stories of four intrepid homemakers who take their case all the way to the Supreme Court, and a young female journalist who's caught in the radioactive crossfire.

Decommissioning Fukushima: The Battle to Contain Radioactivity(en)

TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is the site of one of history's worst nuclear disasters: the meltdown of three nuclear reactors. The decommissioning program in Japan learns from the Three Mile Island decommissioning in the US after the nuclear plant accident in 1976 in Pennsylvania.

Containment(en)

Every nuclear weapon made, every watt of electricity produced from a nuclear power plant leaves a trail of nuclear waste that will last for the next four hundred generations. We face the problem of how to warn the far distant future of the nuclear waste we have buried --but how to do it? How to imagine the far-distant threats to the sites, what kinds of monuments can be built, could stories or legends safeguard our descendants? Filmed at the only American nuclear burial ground, at a nuclear weapons complex and in Fukushima, the film grapples with the ways people are dealing with the present problem and imagining the future. Part observational essay, part graphic novel, this documentary explores the idea that over millennia, nothing stays put.

We Are the Guinea Pigs(en)

Farmers and parents of young children, who live in the Harrisburg, Pa., area, discuss their fears of radioactive contamination from the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident in 1979. Scientists and physicians also expound on the lethal dangers of nuclear power and the risks in containment processes.

Nuclear Fuel Waste Research: The Canadian Program(en)

The Canadian program for nuclear fuel waste management is explained through interviews with people working inside and outside the nuclear industry and by a visit to the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment, where a long-range used-fuel disposal program is being developed. Revised version from the film Nuclear Fuel Waste Management (106C 0179 542). Produced for the NFB by Crawley Films Ltd. for Atomic Energy Canada, Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment.

Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise(en)

Using only archive film and a new musical score by the band Mogwai, Mark Cousins presents an impressionistic kaleidoscope of our nuclear times – protest marches, Cold War sabre-rattling, Chernobyl and Fukishima – but also the sublime beauty of the atomic world, and how x-rays and MRI scans have improved human lives. The nuclear age has been a nightmare, but dreamlike too.

Shift(de)

SCHICHT (SHIFT) is both a reckoning and a search for traces of the past. Layer by layer the film unfolds the portrait of the filmmaker's family - brought to life by records from private archives - and embarks on a dizzying trip through the shrinking industrial city of Salzgitter, Germany.