The Chris Cuomo Project - Oliver Stone

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

Director and co-writer Oliver Stone (“Wall Street,” “JFK,” “W”) and co-writer Joshua S. Goldstein (Professor Emeritus of International Relations, American University) join Chris to discuss “Nuclear Now,” their film investigating whether nuclear power is a crucial tool in fighting climate change and the world’s energy needs. In a wide-ranging conversation, the three explore how and why nuclear energy fell out of favor in the United States, the pervasiveness of anti-nuclear propaganda campaigns, why people who understand nuclear power the most are the least afraid of the technology, nuclear misconceptions surrounding disasters, waste storage, and water consumption, how the international community continues to embrace nuclear power, and much more. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, when you see me like this, you know what it means. This is about the Chris Cuomo Project podcast. Oliver Stone and his co-writer on his new movie, Nuclear Now, are going to be on the podcast talking about one of the most controversial subjects, one of the most dangerous conversations we're not having about nuclear power as part of the solution for a green economy. Look, no shame in my game. I've been using AG1 for over five years. Why? It works, it's easier, and it's less expensive. That's why. Since 2010, they've been getting their formulations right and tweaking their formulas. Why? Because the science changes. Okay? It's not like politics where people decide to believe one thing and no matter what happens with the facts, they never shift. This is the opposite. Ooh, prebiotics work with probiotics, but in this way.

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Drinkag1.com slash ccp. Check it out. We don't fake the funk here. And here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52 52 of us experience some kind of ed between the ages of 40 and 70 i know it's taboo it's embarrassing but it shouldn't be thankfully we now have hymns and it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ed treatment and it's all online hymns is changing men's health care why because it's giving you access to ED treatment, and it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care.

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You'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, the price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. Gentlemen, thank you so much to discuss your very ambitious product. Oliver Stone, let me start with you. Doing a documentary about nuclear power is very ambitious. Why did you want to take on this task? Well, if I knew what I was in for, I might have reconsidered. It was very difficult, let's say, two and a half years. I took it on

because I was scared and I was concerned for the future. I've heard all of the, seen many of the debates and documentaries about it. And frankly, it was confusing points of view. Josh Goldstein, his book was reviewed along with his co-writer, Stefan Sist, a Swedish nuclear engineer. Their book, A Bright Future, came out in 2019 and was positively reviewed by the new york times richard rhodes and richard rhodes is knowledgeable about nuclear energy and bomb too and i bought the book bought the rights and i found josh very cooperative because he wanted to get it out there of course it's it's a dry book. It's not a movie. So I have the, personally, I had the problem of translating it into terms that could be

grasped by, I would hope, a ninth grader or an eighth grader, able to be understood and answer my own questions. It was my own search. What is nuclear energy? How did, where did it start? What happened to it? Where are we now? What happens in the future? These are the five different areas. And we tried to answer all these questions in an hour 44. Not easy. Well, but you're starting at zero to negative because people have a lot of stigma about nuclear energy, and nobody discusses it when it comes to any of the solutions of moving away from fossil fuels, despite the fact that the United States, based on whose number you want to use, has somewhere between 15% and 20% of its power still coming from nuclear. We all watched what just happened in California, where they couldn't shut down a plant.

But what I think is interesting about the film you guys made are the multiple points of reference. You just don't dive into America's past and present. You have France, Russia, and of course, your book, Professor, was contextualized around what Sweden was trying to do. So why do you believe, Professor, that the rest of the world has such a different attitude than one of the first and most influential adapters of nuclear power being the United States. Well, it varies a lot from one country to another. You know, France has been a nuclear journey, not so much, although the people like it,

but not the government. It's been a tragedy that the United States, which started it and which really should be leading the whole thing, turned against it during those years. In the 1970s, the environmental movement flipped. It used to be pro-nuclear because it's so pro-environmental. It's one reason I love it. So compact, so powerful, takes up very little land, uses very few resources, etc. But then flipped against it because of fear and fear of radioactivity, helped along by some opposition by the coal and oil industries.

At that time, we saw it as a threat. And because of that, the United States went off track. One thing we find shocking when you look at the movie or the story behind it is that the U.S. was on track, and I think the rest of the world would have followed, to decarbonize our economy. If we kept on the path we were on in the 1970s, we wouldn't be burning fossil fuels now. We would literally have switched over to a carbon-free nuclear economy worldwide, and we wouldn't have the problem that we have now about climate change. It's such a difficult

problem, climate change now, but it was actually very tractable at that time, and we went away from it. Now, other countries drew their own conclusions, and a place like France went in for nuclear back several decades ago, because starting with the energy crisis in the 1970s, they realized that they were insecure when their energy was coming from somewhere else, it could be cut off and their economy was helpless. So with nuclear, they're in control of their own destiny. They built it out very fast in 15 years, and that's a proven example that we know others can follow. And as our book talks about Sweden, similar thing, build it very quickly, switch over and decarbonize the economy. So this is something that's a proven model the world could follow. Some places are very comfortable with it, but other places, especially where the fear factor has been hyped up by opponents, then not so much.

And so, as you say, we're starting out with a lot of fear and we have to dispel the fear. But the point of the movie is not that we have the answer, the program that everybody has to follow, but that we need to have the conversation. else to follow, but that we need to have the conversation. We need to put nuclear on the agenda and see what role it's going to play and not have it be a taboo subject that everyone's too afraid to talk about. Oliver, how do you demystify a boogeyman? Well, as you know, my film work has done that to some degree. I mean, I like to go after the lie. There's always a lie in the base of the story.

And that lie has propagated again and again. That's what interests me. I guess I like to shake it up because this is a lie and it destroyed a great opportunity. It's a lost opportunity. It was a great moment in time. We don't have respect for what Marie Curie did and Einstein supported and Fermi and all the scientists of that era, of this era, of the World War II era, supported this. They saw the future and now they still do.

We went around Russia. We went around France. We went to the U.S. to the Idaho Engineering Lab there, Advanced Nuclear. Everybody you talk to knows that it works and it can work big time and we need it. But the consensus in Washington is positive, too. I mean, there's no fight between Democrats and Republicans about it. There is a bipartisan agreement. It's simply the will to do. Now, Biden started out with the will to do, but obviously his bill in Congress had other problems, and there's been no talk about it.

It's kind of easily disappeared. It's easier for it to disappear and not be talked about, but that's not dealing with the issue. It doesn't have a constituency. Solar and other adaptive new or green or whatever moniker you want to use businesses have more developed lobbies, more hands out, and they are more aggressive with the politics right now, solar, wind, than nuclear is. So that's why for politicians, we know that the only green that's really going to get their attention is, of course, cash. So they're dealing with it on that level. Nuclear hasn't presented that opportunity.

But they also have leverage on storytellers like you, professors like you, Joshua, and journalists like me, which is the, are you nuts pushback, which is nuclear. Are you nuts? Haven't you watched the Simpsons? Don't you know that if it goes wrong, we all die and that what you have to store basically destroys the planet. I mean, you might better off breathing coal 24 hours a day. At least it's not going to kill everybody within a time zone. How do you deal with that first from a story perspective, Oliver? And then we'll talk about how you debunk the merits from the mythology. You deal with it with facts. First of all, you examine, you talk about what nuclear is, Facts. First of all, you examine, you talk about what nuclear is, its origins in the universe.

It's always been there. You talk about the heat that comes from the earth. And then you bring it into the new age with Marie Curie and Einstein and Fermi and these people. You explain how it was derailed in the 1970s. First of all, it was brought in the 1930s and 40s during the war. And that was an unfortunate tragedy of history is that war was going on and it was used for the wrong reasons as a bomb. But the bomb is quite different than nuclear energy. And we try to explain that in the movie. It's not enriched in uranium. It's essentially you have to build to get in. Josh is much better at explaining this than I am, but that misunderstanding was there at the beginning. And on top of that, there's a huge misunderstanding about radioactive waste. I'll turn it over to a scientist. You describe the

differences, Josh. And Oliver, it's an important perspective from you though because people have sought out especially you know your work let's say in the second third of your career because i believe that you have a whole third in front of you um of you taking on challenging concepts and making people think about what they thought they knew so this is a great team this is why i was so um stoked to hear that you guys were doing it. So Josh, in terms of dealing from the perspective, I looked at a lot of the comments about your book. The more sophisticated the person who's talking about the book, A Bright Future, the more differential they are. And the farther they go towards politics or different agendas, the more boogeyman it is, whereas this is just crazy talk. And that's very unusual when it comes to policy, that an idea is dismissed as almost insane

on its face. What do you do with that? Well, and so if you ask physicists about nuclear power, 80% of them support it. If you ask the people who understand it, people who live close to a nuclear plant, you'd think they would be the most scared, but they're the most supportive. They understand it. And so there are topics like climate change

where the people who understand it the most are the most afraid. But this is the opposite. The people who understand it the most are the least afraid. And the people who don't know about it are the most afraid. I mean, it's straight out of the polling data. If you ask people, how much do you know about it and how scared are you?

So that's one problem. And then you touched on another, that the nuclear industry doesn't have a natural constituency. It's not like, you know, Wyoming with coal or Texas with oil. Or, you know, there's not a place that has investment in it that's going to benefit especially. And a lot of the big nuclear plants that we have are owned by utility companies, which also own fossil fuel plants. So they have a portfolio that's mostly gas or maybe some coal and then, and some renewables and also some nuclear. So they're not really committed to it per se. And

if there's a lot of trouble and pushback, as we had here, the nuclear plant that used to supply my house until less than a decade ago, Vermont Yankee, just It's up against all the subsidies for the competing renewables and all the political opposition. The Vermont legislature didn't want it and so forth. And the company was also running gas plants. So eventually it's like, this isn't worth it. Shut it down and we'll benefit from our gas. So there's no constituency for it. And then in the countries with the parliamentary system, where the Green Party has the decisive, perhaps small, but decisive block of votes to make a government, to get the majority in a parliament, and this was true in Sweden and Germany and Belgium,

and then their demand is, we'll join the government. You can have a government with us. You can't without us. But you have to shut down your nuclear plants. So there's an anti-nuclear constituency out there with political power, even though the majority of the population in those countries actually supports nuclear. The Chris Cuomo Project is supported by Cozy Earth. Why? Because I like their sheets.

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and you can get up to 35% off your first order. CozyEarth.com and the code is Chris. We don't fake the funk here. And here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo, it's embarrassing, but it shouldn't be. Thankfully, we now have HIMS, and it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ED treatment, and it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care.

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And there are options as low as two bucks a dose. HIMS has hundreds of thousands of trusted subscribers. So if ED is getting you down, it's time to pick it up. Start your free online visit today at HIMS.com slash CCP. H-I-M-S dot com slash CCP.

And you will get personalized ED treatment options. HIMS.com slash CCP. Prescriptions, you need an online consultation with a health care provider and they will determine if appropriate. Restrictions apply. You see the website, you'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. So you have a three headed dog. You have the disaster, the storage, and the water that it takes. And these are the most common cudgels, right? So tick through them

and leave water for last, because I get why they talk about how much water is necessary and what it does to that water. I get why they raise it. I don't think it's a substantiated concern, but it sounds good. So when people say to you, you can't store the stuff, and if something goes wrong, it's an absolute disaster if anything goes wrong, and it uses a ton of water. It's never been a disaster, really. There was one accident in Chernobyl you could call a disaster because, you know, like 100 people. Fukushima. Fukushima. Nobody died from the nuclear plant at Fukushima.

18,000 people died from tsunami. Dozens of miles are uninhabitable. The animals drop dead. The whole landscape is destroyed. I haven't seen it, but I've heard. From Fukushima. That's what they say. Well, the landscape was destroyed by

a tsunami. It was the worst earthquake in Japanese history, and they have a lot of them. So the people cross wire in their minds, either in the case of Three Mile Island, it was a film, the China syndrome that was in theaters about how dangerous nuclear was, and much worse than what happened in the actual accident. In chernobyl that was a real accident but in fukushima it was cross-wired with the earthquake and tsunami that's what was killing all the people and so um you know it's hard for people to sort it out if the journalists don't do a careful job of telling you what's killing people um but this idea that when something goes wrong it goes very wrong it's not true i mean if you look at statistics, as I like to do, numbers, nuclear is by far the

safest form. It's at least as safe as wind and solar and hundreds of times safer than coal, which is still the number one way that the world makes electricity. So this idea of the disaster is just way off base. But what's happened is, okay, so this is not a popular thing for me to say, but I actually believe that if we had more nuclear accidents, we'd be better off because we would learn to live with them. They'd be like airplane crashes. Oh my God, an airplane crashed and 300 people were killed. And that's a disaster. But we go on and learn from it and build better airplanes. And then we keep flying because it works. It's convenient. We want to do it. So if we'd had that with nuclear power, we would have said, oh my God, Chernobyl, 100 people died. But instead, because it almost never happens.

And in the US Navy, which has hundreds of reactors over the years, it's never happened. Never been a radiological incident. And so then that becomes the standard. Nothing must ever go wrong. It must be really dangerous if we're being so careful to make sure nothing ever happens wrong. But if we're going to build out nuclear on a large scale, as I think we should because of the climate situation, there will be accidents and people will die. They do in any industry, but you always have to say compared to what? Coal kills people from cancer, emphysema, heart disease, just routinely. On a

good day, when coal is operating perfectly, it's killing people. And on a bad day nuclear power hardly kills anybody so that's that's the disasters it's it's just completely overhyped for what it is look at the numbers look at our world in data you know different ways of generating electricity and how safe or dangerous they are and storage and water and the uh the so-called nuclear waste is spent fuel that's come out of the reactor. It still has a lot of energy in it. You cool it off in pools for a while and then put it in dry casks. The casks, I've stood right next to them. The concrete absorbs the radiation.

You don't need special gear or anything. They're not posing any danger. They're good for at least 100 years. The short answer is solve climate change first and then do something with those fuel casks. Incidentally, one thing you can do with them is to burn that so-called waste in new reactors. Still got most of its energy in it. Another thing you can do with it, which Finland is doing now, is put it deep underground in repositories. It's never going to hurt anybody. Nuclear waste has the unique property that it gets less dangerous over time

because of radioactive decay. So, for instance, if you have a dump full of old wind turbines and solar cells, much less coal waste, these are full of toxic elements like lead and cadmium and there's a word, curie, that are never going to get safer. Right. A million years from now, they're still going to be dangerous.

But with nuclear, after a few hundred years, it's mostly all radiated away and pretty safe. Okay, water is not needed for a nuclear reactor. There are new small reactors that don't use water. I mean, I'll call out Holtec 160. It's a 160-megawatt reactor. There are new small reactors that don't use water. I mean, I'll call out Holtec 160 is a 160 megawatt reactor. They're making a deal with India to roll these out in the interior of India specifically because they don't need a water cooling source. If you're near a water and cooling source like a river or an ocean, then it's convenient to cool it that way.

If you're not near them, then you put up these big cooling towers, which people seem to think are somehow dangerous. They're actually the least interesting part of a nuclear plant, but they've become the symbol of it, which is all wrong because coal plants have those same towers if they're not near a water source. So we've got these symbols and imagery and fears. It's all cross-wired, wrong in our brains, and people don't understand what's safe and dangerous. Other than that cross-wired, wrong in our brains, and people don't understand what's safe and dangerous. Other than that, we're really on track. Oliver, the metaphor of someone tilting at a windmill, the man of La Mancha, the idea of being quixotic, that you have a dream, but it

can't happen. Do you think this may fall into this category and that it's just something that the American culture has decided to move past, no matter what the world does? Well, that's very important. I mean, the rest of the world is crucial. In the film, we say there's one billion people who are late. We consider the first world, they have a lot of electricity. That's us, the advanced countries.

But most of the world, the seven billion, other people have limited electricity use and some people not at all, as we tried to show. So electricity is a worldwide concern and the need for it is going to go up, we don't know, two to five times as estimated by 2050. That is an enormous figure and how are we going to produce that electricity? How? How that amount of volume?

I think we have to be more concerned about India and China and Africa and Asia. Now, the American people don't think of them first. They think about America first. So the argument is always American-centric. But the argument I was hoping is that America, first of all, would clean up its act and get with the public program. You see, in Russia, they have Rosatom. 200,000 people work for it. It's a government enterprise. In every country in the world, France, China, it's government-oriented. It's socialist, so to speak.

But it's important that it's the kind of work Rosatom does that American companies cannot do. They build for profit, and they don't standardize. All we need is a standardized approach to assembly of these nuclear reactors. If we could do what Japan did, stamp them off, or Korea, that's the solution. And it can be done. It may not be done at the price we like, because we've raised the price, and now we're past that point. But China is still building at, what is it, a third of the cost, Josh? the price we like because we we've raised the price and now we're past that point but china

is still building at what is it a third of the cost uh josh china and korea are building at a third of the cost very effective and we can do it and in one year they how many chinese the chinese put it up into what a year approximately am i correct i don't know it's about about five years and and about a quarter of the cost the same reactor that we're trying to finish in georgia trying to put four of them on the grid and you know just just like that fraction of the cost fraction of the time it doesn't have to be expensive and time consuming but it but it is the way we do it in the United States. As a dreamer, I'm hoping that there's some kind of consciousness that's going around, so we look to another country. We didn't look to France. We didn't pay attention.

It's a shame, but maybe we'll look to China if they start doing some things and doing them cheaply. Maybe we can change the way we approach this thing. One thing we can get rid of is some of these regulations, no question. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Josh has been against that from the beginning. It was always a bureaucratic item to it. But it's easy because to an uninformed electorate, let's say, or just, you know, ignorance within any constituency anywhere in the country, if you say that you're going to limit nuclear power, it sounds like you're doing something for the common good. You're keeping people safe. And it's an interesting subject for you to take on, Oliver, because I know as an observer of yours, it's a point of pride that you make a

difference in the topics that you take on. You want to move the needle. And the question is, can you move the needle on this when the resistance to it is generationally automatic? I notice in the media, often the journalists will say, end nuclear power, but it's dangerous. That's the first thought in their head. They connect it to danger. It's very hard when you have that kind of mentality, uninformed mentality. Everything's dangerous, but this is less dangerous. Compared to what?

We should always ask, compared to what? Compared to climate change, there's no doubt at all. We have to get an enormous amount of power into the world. How do we do it any way we can? If we have to build SMRs in America, which are not going to deal with the real end problem, which is we need a lot, but at least if we build a few SMRs, put them in coastal cities, ship them around like Koreans do and like the Russians are doing at PVEC, once it starts to happen as a dreamer it starts to happen more and more and more people believe in it and that's what i'm hoping for do

you expect it to be relevant in the upcoming elections oliver and i doubt it i doubt it uh it's i i doubt it you know more about the political process than I do. But I hope, I hope people would know the difference. You saw the ending of the movie. It's very hopeful. People would know the difference if we were doing it. If we could cut some of our emissions down, let's say 10, 15%, just start the process of cutting it down. That's what's amazing.

We put in renewables, but we keep putting more carbon emissions in the air i don't get it we've spent a fortune germany is an idiotic country they spent billions of dollars with all these renewables and what happened they nothing then price of electricity went up and now on saturday night they closed their last three reactors right it's hopeless well here's the you better hope it's not hopeless because that's the whole point behind the film that I hope people get from nuclear now. But Josh, here's the problem, professor, is that there's an easy counter argument, which is that is really in abundance in America much more than any other natural resource, which is denial. much more than any other natural resource, which is denial. And it's not just denial about nuclear. It's that everything that you guys are predicating this conversation on is false.

There is no real global warming. Temperature goes up, temperature goes down. And to the extent that's happening, it's a good thing. And it's like an eighth of an inch. And even former President Trump found a very hapless way to gain advantage off this in a recent interview where he says people talk about global warming. What they should be worried about is nuclear warming. Now, he made up a phrase that doesn't exist sitting across from a dog-faced man that just sat looking at him the way when you whistle at a labrador like this and he said the nuclear the nuclear warming that's the thing all over the world that's what we should worry about he was obviously conflating ideas but you know what

it worked professor i saw on social media yeah you know he's right they're worried about this like an eighth of an inch of the ocean. And meanwhile, like the nuclear thing could kill everybody. That's the state of play. How do you deal with that, professor? Well, so I'm motivated by climate change. That was why I got into this topic. But let's say that I agreed with a sizable number of people who don't believe climate change is happening. And, you know, I'm a scientist. I'm not going to say I'm 100% sure of anything. You have to be open-minded about it.

So there are people who say, no, I've looked at it and I think climate change is not happening or it's all a hoax or whatever. You would still want to build nuclear power. In fact, some of the big supporters of nuclear power are people who don't believe in climate change. And the reason is, it's really overdetermined. But let's say you're an old school environmentalist. You don't believe in climate change, but you like forests, you're a conservationist. Then the way to use the least resources

is to build nuclear power because it's so concentrated. It has a small footprint. It hardly uses any resources, you know, sort of the opposite of the sprawl of wind and solar. And the Sierra Club used to be pro-nuclear power. They had a whole campaign, atoms, not dams. You know, instead of building these hydro dams and flooding ecosystems, you know, with water and destroying them, you know, just build this little nuclear plant instead. It's much lighter on the earth. Or let's say you're like France and you just want energy security.

And you realize that if your energy is coming from somewhere else, you don't control your destiny, build nuclear power. Then you're producing your own energy. Or let's say you just want a strong economy because you're a politician. You want to let's say you just want a strong economy because you're a politician, you want to get reelected, and you realize that nuclear power is the cheapest thing if you didn't screw it all up with the way we're doing it in America. But this whole issue, for me, climate change is the big issue, and it's not going to be determined in Germany or the United States.

It's going to be determined in those fast-growing countries, especially Asia, Southeast Asia, the Indias and Indonesia, Vietnam, countries that are growing fast. The electricity demand is rapidly escalating. They're heavily dependent on coal because it's the cheapest, easiest thing. And so to my mind, that's the ultimate reason to like nuclear powers, that if we do it right, it'll be the cheapest form of energy. It used to be the cheapest thing when South Korea built multiple reactors in a row and got good at it. Instead of how we do it in the US, it was cheaper than everything, including hydrop power, including fossil fuel.

They have to import their fossil in Korea. And in France, it's cheap, cheaper than Germany, cheaper than most of the neighboring countries. So if you like cheap energy or energy security or environmental conservation, there's just multiple reasons. And the only thing in the way of it is if you're afraid of it, which we are because we've been told with billions of dollars behind this propaganda campaign for decades

to tell us that nuclear power is dangerous. And that's the lie. That's what Oliver, I think, is attracted to in this project. There's a big lie behind it, and it's just not true. Do you know when trains were first built, people were terribly afraid of them. They thought that you went so fast in the train that your brain would be pushed to the back of your head and terrible health effects would ensue. And so any new technology is, I think, vulnerable to these kind of fears. But with the propaganda campaign behind it and Hollywood behind it,

with all the movies about radiation scare of various kinds, we're up against a lot of fear. But we hope that the movie will open a space to start reconsidering it. We're not going to get everyone to flip their position overnight, but we want to get it on the, put it on the agenda, on the conversation. Well, professor, you are new to the mass media consuming of your ideas. Oliver Stone has made a unique market in taking on controversy, being provocative. How does this project in its nascent stages of being consumed and commented on compared to others for you, Oliver? I don't know. It's been so long.

Every time I finish a movie, I seem to get just somebody off, right? So I'm not used to it. And where is you down? I'm not young as you are, but, you know, this thing, I would accept that no one listens. It's happened before. So, you know, I have to accept these things. But it's so damn shame.

I'm ashamed that we are such a smart people. We built computers. We built so many great things. We're doing so much on so many fronts. How can we be blind to this truth? That's what's amazing to me. Still, it's amazing. So I guess I would die amazed. There are worse ways to die. You know, one of the interesting things to me that I've become a little bit of a student of predicting where people are going to be on what I'm covering that kind of

helped shape my coverage to kind of address what I see as being some likely obstacles. And one of them that really made me laugh was when I was looking at people talking about Oliver Stone doing this story, the only word that would stick out for them other than nuclear was Russia. And I kept seeing these comments of, so Oliver Stone wants Russia to put nuclear plants in America? I mean, is that what he wants? Isn't that what Putin wants to kill us with all these nuclear reactors now? And it was so interesting to me that America has a unique aspect to its culture development right now, which is people run with what feels right, even if it's dead wrong. And that is some space to enter, trying to tell people that they're wrong about something that nobody's ever corrected them about in a generation.

I've been there, done that. I know what it feels like. So it's hard, you know, but what else should I do? If I know better, I got to put it out there. I feel like we know better about this. We should grow up. And in fact, as you know, I'm very much being partners with Russia, partners with China.

This thing could happen, but we turned our back on it. We went back to the Cold War thinking, which I find dinosaur age, and that's where we are. So we're there. But the world is going to go on, and the world will get worse this way, and people will do something. They will react eventually. So it's inevitable.

Necessity forces change. Unfortunately, in America, it's going to take some huge necessity to make any changes. I don't know why, but that seems to be the case. What has been the most optimistic part of this since you started showing it to people? People get it. People get it. Young, a lot of young people, a lot of old people too. People get it. People get it. A lot of young people, a lot of old people too. People get it. I mean, it's clear that if you want to go looking for why it won't work, you'll find your reasons very easily because they're all out there. But the truth is, as Josh said, it does turning over at his grave. You realize those were men who went out and did. They built. They were engineers. They were capable.

That's what we need in this country. We have to read us. Well, we have the spirit. We have the spirit. Look at Elon Musk, the electric cars, this, that. We can do it. And these scientists are great. These young people are great.

They're finding new ways to combine hydrogen with everything else, which is amazing. Hydrogen could do so much work because nuclear can help hydrogen come into the world and be electrolysized, right? There's so many uses. Still, the world could be a beautiful place. That's what's amazing. It could be a beautiful place.

We don't need conflict. We don't need this pessimism. I guess pessimism is a sickness unto itself. You felt it in the age of the Black Plague, the 14th century Europe. We've had dark times, and then we've had renaissances, so I pray for a renaissance. Well, look, I think it's a good sign that somebody like you doing this project in such a unique way, Nuclear Now, having Oliver Stone, who's always known for owning his own material, working with a noted professor in this space. That shows an innovation that people would naturally think is coming. Professor, in terms of what you're hoping this film does most of all, what is it?

what you're hoping this film does most of all, what is it? Open up the space to put nuclear on the agenda so that you don't read article after article that just pretends it doesn't exist. And so that people don't just have a knee-jerk reaction, but can balance their fears with the risks, the benefits, and have a conversation. The tagline of the movie is time to look again, not time to do what we say or, you know, have time to build Russian reactors or something. You know, that's

all secondary. We need to get the topic out of the shadows and put some light on it and get people comfortable talking about it. And that's the number one thing I would say about this Hollywood thing and Oliver's reputation. I think he did a fantastic job on this. He traveled around the world. He learned all about a difficult topic. I was really impressed with it. And maybe we had our ups and downs working on it, but overall it's been a wonderful journey for me and i've gotten to know him better i think people who have some knee-jerk reactions about oliver this or that don't don't really know him haven't really put it all in perspective but he's the one that was willing to go to put his neck on the line you know go out there and make this difficult movie about a topic that was sure to incite a lot of trouble and controversy. And I really appreciate that he, alone among all the Hollywood directors, was willing to

take it on and do it. So congratulations to him. I think it's a great movie. Well, we're discussing energy. And when it comes to Oliver Stone, he has the most precious form of energy in our culture, which is you'll get tons of opinions about him. And that's great because the energy is people pay attention to what Oliver Stone does. And hopefully your nuclear now hopefully is no different. And that people give it a fair reading. They don't like it. Let them try to counter it. And let's start a debate and a conversation because that's the only way change happens. Nothing changes if nothing changes.

So hopefully it starts with this film and some conversation that people like I can put to politicians. Ask them if they've seen it. Ask them what their position is. Ask them what it isn't. And we'll go from there. Oliver Stone, thank you so much for the opportunity.

Thank you, Chris. From a fan of this project and of your work, period. Thank you for the stories that you've told. And Professor Goldstein, good luck with everything. And thank you for writing the book. Thanks for talking to us. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it.

Oliver Stone has done a lot of controversial work, but boy, is he taking on a biggie in nuclear. Now, are we leaving one of the biggest advantages on the table? Nuclear power. Check it out.