Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Nuclear Now’ on VOD, Oliver Stone’s Surprisingly Reasonable Solution to Climate Change

From the Who Knew Oliver Stone Could Be So Reasonable Dept. comes Nuclear Now (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video), a documentary passionately pleading the case for nuclear power. It’s the most viable solution to the climate change crisis, Stone asserts, and it may take some diligence for some of us to listen to him, considering his two previous projects found him rummaging around some more in JFK conspiracy theories (2021’s doc JFK Revisited) and spending four hours interviewing Russian “president” Vladimir Putin (2017’s Showtime four-parter The Putin Interviews). So compartmentalize a bit, and look past some – not all, since that might not ever be possible – of the baggage Stone tends to bring with him, and here you’ll find a pretty convincing argument to save humanity from itself.   

NUCLEAR NOW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Stone speaks in voiceover about how we as a society have been “trained from the very beginning” to fear nuclear power. We saw what happened in Nagasaki when the U.S. dropped the bomb. We also saw what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl when nuclear reactors melted down. And we’ve since come to consider the very concept of nuclear anything as an imminent existential threat to humanity: Death by bomb, death by nuclear winter, death by radiation, death by toxic pollution. And this, Stone asserts, is not the scientific truth of the matter. We’ve been fed misinformation for decades, wrongly lumping nuclear war and nuclear power into the same category, and here, the director is surprisingly forgiving in his tone: “People don’t think well when they’re scared,” he says. The planet is in a precarious place, with demands for electricity rising precipitously, while the need to curb carbon emissions has never been greater. “It’s time to look again at nuclear,” he says.

So goes Stone’s thesis, outlined in a 10-minute cold open. He diligently tracks the history of nuclear power like a nerdy junior-high science teacher: The discovery of uranium, Marie Curie, Einstein, fission, nuclear-powered submarines. He illustrates the fear of all things nuclear via old movie clips ranging from Them to Godzilla; he illustrates the destructive nature of climate change and rising seas via old movie clips from The Day After Tomorrow. Twenty minutes go by before we see a talking head, and a few moments later, true to the director’s style, we see Stone himself, interviewing said talking head. He charts the proliferation of anti-nuclear power sentiments via disinformation stirred by the oil and coal lobbies and through the No Nukes movement, Greenpeace’s agenda and high-profile figures like Ralph Nader and Jane Fonda. The high-profile meltdowns at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl only solidified naysayers’ cases and stirred further fear.

But that’s all unfounded in science and reason, Stone asserts. He points out that Three Mile Island resulted in zero deaths, and that Chernobyl was the result of human error and faulty design. These are rare instances; most nuclear power plants run cleanly and efficiently without incident; even the destruction of the Japanese Fukushima plant after a 2011 earthquake resulted in no radiation-related deaths. Stone and some commentators point out that Chernobyl is the only instance where radiation from a nuclear power plant took human lives, and that many, many more people die every year due to the effects of coal and fossil fuel consumption. Stone visits nuclear power plants around the world, pokes holes in the notion that nuclear waste is a major problem and points out that the use of renewable energy sources like solar and wind aren’t cutting into carbon emissions quickly enough to ward off the effects of climate change. The answer is right in front of our face: Nuclear power. It’s not a popular solution, and it’s been misunderstood, but that’s Oliver Stone for you – always going against the grain. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Nuclear Now is a logical extension of An Inconvenient Truth, with the personal, first-person passion that brings to mind Werner Herzog’s documentaries. (It’s worth noting that Stone’s take on the topic is far more optimistic than Herzog’s might be.)

Performance Worth Watching: Jake DeWitte and Caroline Cochran head a company that designs and builds small-scale nuclear reactors that represent the hopeful leading edge of innovation in nuclear power – and they make Stone crack a rare smile, which speaks volumes.  

Memorable Dialogue: As the CEO of a Russian nuclear-energy concern, Alexey Likhachev may not be the most objective source, but he gives good soundbite: “The nuclear industry is an extra lung our world has.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Frankly, Nuclear Now has all the flash and panache of a movie you nodded off to in ninth-grade earth science class. Which, hey, surprise! Not everything Oliver Stone does is confrontational and transparently provocative. But given the fascinating and socio-politically imperative subject matter, it doesn’t need to be an innovative documentary to be effective. I rolled my eyes while enduring the smattering of red herrings Stone indulged in JFK Revisited, but found Nuclear Now to be the opposite, a persuasive, well-researched piece of op-ed journalism. There’s little hyperbole or sensationalism here – OK, he indulges some ominous music over disarming imagery, but that’s understandable considering the dire message he wishes to convey – just a strong, affirmed point-of-view.

So I assert that hard, compelling truth and facts don’t need to be “entertaining” in their presentation in order to be worthwhile. If there’s criticism to apply here, it’s how Stone opens with a fairly dry hour of content, and backloads the film with faces, the people who are driving to renovate and innovate nuclear power. But we’re all adults here, and capable of consuming and comprehending the information as presented. Besides, Stone would open himself up to further criticism if he employed any gimmickry in his filmmaking. On one hand, considering his fiery reputation, Stone might not be the best guy to make this argument; on the other, his assured and confident voice at times feels perfect for the subject matter. By the end of the film, he praises the spirit of progress and the human mind’s capability for ingenuity, concluding on an upbeat note, and maybe crafting a new narrative about Stone himself: instead of being his old divisive self, he’s trying to unite us for a common cause.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Whether anyone is willing to listen to Oliver Stone in 2023 is debatable – he’s surely worn out his welcome with some – but Nuclear Now is nevertheless a worthwhile documentary that fights the good fight against an existential crisis.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.