Nuclear Exodus

Nuclear Exodus

2013, Environment  -   154 Comments
3.37
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Ratings: 3.37/10 from 330 users.

Right now there are more people connected to the Internet than there were on the planet when WWII began. And we all started doing a very special thing... we started sharing everything, with everyone, everywhere. We shared what we loved, what we hated, we shared fashion, music and art, we shared what made us laugh, what made us cry... we even started sharing money. And for the first time in history a united global culture emerged.

A culture independent of race, borders, and nationalities who realized we are all one species that shares one planet... except there was one dirty, "little" problem - POWER. There are presently 432 nuclear reactors operating worldwide: 54 in Japan, 59 in France, and 104 in the United States. How many people were affected by Chernobyl exactly, and what kind of health impact can we expect to see from Fukushima? Well, that really depends on who you ask. According to George Monbiot's figures Chernobyl has killed about 43 people.

The governments of the world, those that lead the United Nations and comprise the UN Security Council, would like you to believe that the number of people afflicted with cancer, birth defects and other radiation related illnesses from the fallout of over 2,000 nuclear weapons detonations is statistically insignificant. But in order for that to be the case the United Nations would also need you to believe that a full scale nuclear meltdown like Chernobyl would only kill about two people a year.

However, bear in mind that the average nuclear warhead only contains about 20 pounds of nuclear fuel, and nuclear power-plant, such as Fukushima, contains thousands of tons of nuclear fuel. And this is the reason why just one nuclear meltdown has the capacity to destroy an entire nation. A single nuclear disaster, such as the ongoing possibility at Fukushima's reactor units 3 and 4, can release more radiation than the combined radiation of all the nuclear weapons tests ever conducted.

According to the filmmaker of this documentary, the first two hours are a nightmare beyond description, a journey through hell and back, but if you stay the course the final hour will offer you a truly glorious solution.

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winter andresen
winter andresen
3 years ago

Thanks for the great documentary.

Educate Yourself.
Educate Yourself.
4 years ago

Cool fear mongering with half truths. What a load of trash.

winter andresen
winter andresen
4 years ago

this vid should be getting much higher ratinga - in time it will

B$
B$
4 years ago

If you watch any of this, min 33:00 to min 35:00 is epic. The monologue at 34:00 couldn't be better and still holds true in so many aspects today

Michael Evans
Michael Evans
5 years ago

An absurdly farcical propaganda piece. Your intelligence will drop a point or two from watching it.

Sully
Sully
5 years ago

industrial civilization, it will never be possible to safely shut down all 450 operating nuclear reactors and recover or maintain control of perhaps thousands of nuclear waste facilities around the world. And our obligation is to provide safe and secure storage for all that radioactive waste for a million years. Mankind has still to build a structure which will last 50 thousand years, let alone a million.

DustUp
DustUp
6 years ago

Sadly the most arrogant commenters operate from the least and mistaken information. It would seem Naoto Kan former president of Japan, among many other experts, would have the proper information to determine as they have stated, that the safest nuclear power plant is NO nuclear power plant. Terrorism or natural disaster makes us all vulnerable to existing spent fuel rod storage, even if all nuclear reactors were shut down.

It seems that situation will not be fixed until those who own and promote nuclear energy are required to and forced to live right next to those nuclear plants. Sadly the same is true for fossil fuel pipelines (and processing plants). Until their owners and promoters are forced to live on top of them, will they be made safe. And how can they be made safe in unstable earth areas (slides, earthquakes, etc.)

So the mistaken rebuttal by the arrogant operating from limited information, is "nuclear and fossil fuel are the only thing we have that is capable to provide us enough energy".

Nikola Tesla (not Tesla auto of Elon Musk) solved this problem over 100 years ago, as have a number of others right up to present day.

There is a reason you don't do some of Tesla's 100+ year old experiments at any level in our BanksterCorproGovtMedia indoctrination system they call education. It would cut out their mega Billions in profits. The same reason Tesla himself was shut down by JP Morgan. If he cannot put a meter on it and charge for it then they don't want it.

If you don't believe that such inventions exist and refuse to go outside the major media and so called education system to educate yourself about those, with a few clicks of your internet, fine. There are low tech much better alternatives to what we use now, even older, used prior to fossil fuel and far safer.

The whole country, vehicles, power plants, homes, office bldgs, etc. could have their energy source from Ethanol. Which is essentially liquid solar energy. Yet, the Powers That Be have put out lies about Ethanol since it is a direct threat to their mega Billions of income. It is no wonder they have propagandized against it. And of course the teachers and authority figures buy into such propaganda.

The claim that Ethanol uses more energy to produce it than you get, is a bald faced lie disproven by the Brazilians who report 6-8 times energy out as in, including manufacturing the farm tractors. Prime food growing farmland is not necessary. Algae grown at sea could be done if necessary, which it isn't at all.

If you care about the human condition which includes the environment, as so many claim (but do you really by any action?), then even the cost of a particular energy source should not be the only factor. If Ethanol is spilled in water, it mixes and dissipates. It is carbon neutral consuming the CO2 in growing the crop to be converted to Ethanol. It is a far safer and superior fuel to petroleum in every stage of production as use. Processing plants would be between the growing areas and the use. Larger farms would have their own. There is little danger as with petroleum refineries. The smaller scale widely distributed approach makes us far less susceptible to any natural disaster or terrorist attack. Especially if a manual system of control were included in case of any computerized failure occurred. This would be likely any way to check computer sensors. The process is rather simple.

The largest reason Ethanol is despised? Anyone can make it. That means profit margins will be low and they cannot manipulate the supply. Both diesel and gasoline vehicles can run on it, airplanes, power plants, etc.

Next the promoters of the status quo will state that your car will get less mpg. Not in vehicles designed for it. Nor in certain vehicles that can be properly tuned for it. Only the vehicles which are only modified minimally to run on Ethanol would see a bit less fuel economy and not all of them. And so what, compared to all the benefits, if you truly care about the human condition and taking the power back from the psychopaths?

Wars would not be fought over Ethanol. Anyone can make it. Add in the cost of the military and its casualties and hospitalization to your petrol mpg that you pay in taxes and national debt.

soumya
soumya
6 years ago

This is an excellent

scorpgal
scorpgal
7 years ago

TMI didn't explode, nor does it belong in a discussion about Fukushima and Chernobyl, unless it's being used as an example of the one time a meltdown was actually stopped. You don't need to know much about nuclear power to see that engineers from in or near the Philadelphia region who could speak freely (a polite way of saying we have big mouths) were able to work things out better than a hierarchical society like Japan or a totalitarian society like the Soviet Union. Japan did much better than the Soviet Union, of course, but even they got slowed down by the tendency to put organizational structure over action and common sense. Their teamwork was impressive in the end, though, and I do think they learned from their mistakes. I'll leave the technical stuff to the experts, but I think the difference between how people responded to the situation in each case is something that needs to be explored before a country that isn't really big on free speech (like China) has an accident.

Chigwalla
Chigwalla
8 years ago

I picture hypothetical aliens studying us and saying:
"Well, they've learned about nuclear fission...and they're using it to boil water..."

Matthew Carter
Matthew Carter
8 years ago

While I do believe the harnessing of nuclear energy could be a good thing, I also believe we achieved this far too early in the stages of our species.
First of all, we rushed this in order to make it happen. And when science is rushed and not fully tested in a safe, and long term study.

If we did not have the need to make this as a weapon, or if the people and corporations who desired to use it as a device for profit, would we have rushed something of this level of danger?

I think it is a good thing to harness power from nature, but we as a species are not responsible enough to do so. There are far too many flaws in using this power, and nothing but flaws in using it as a weapon. And IF there is intelligent life out there, I can only imagine that if they were to ever make it to our solar system in a million years or more from now, would they pass by this brown/red planet that once harbored life? Would they even know that what we did for the sake of money ended up destroying us? Or would they stop and dig out the records o our species from the dust and realize that we were nothing more than talking monkeys that had stumbled upon something so powerful that we, like children, decided to do it without considering the cost?

Fred
Fred
9 years ago

Those people over there that butchered that poor little boy's tonsils have no business being in the medical field... If I could I would go over there and find them and kill them one by one... slowly, so they would suffer the same.

Alonzo Mt Dew Camacho
Alonzo Mt Dew Camacho
9 years ago

This is an excellent, and unflinching Documentary film...

Only reason it is rated low is for the pipe dreamers don't appreciate that it evaporates any support to their belief in nuclear power.

Sue Em
Sue Em
10 years ago

I usually love watching documentaries but this one is too long. A simple sentence is shown for 5 seconds, followed by a compilation of interviews, news reporting and other TV footage. In the first 30 minutes I learned nothing new. The message was the Chernobyl and Fukushima were bad. Guess what....I already knew this.

Todd Morrow
Todd Morrow
10 years ago

My next car is going to be a Tesla, if I can help it. And I'll rejoice on the day they put Ford, GM and Chevrolet out of business. Out with the old, indeed!

windship
windship
10 years ago

This felt like two different documentaries stuck together with emotion, not solutions that match the scale of our conundrum. The first two hours were tough, but the last hour a bit unrelated to that experience. While I have huge admiration for the entrepreneurial spirit of Elon Musk, Teslas are more about maintaining our fatal addiction to the sexy private automobile than just keeping the lights on and the fridge running while we monitor rising radiation levels.

Colonizing other planets will only work if we keep Earth fully habitable for the next 500 years, and it's already debatable whether we've got the luxury of even another century of ecological overshoot at the current exponential rate we are mining the planet's carrying capacity. Dreams of exploration are great, but we already have a serious near-terminal crisis on this planet that needs our full attention ASAP.

It's also quite disappointing that there's no mention at all of geothermal energy as a viable baseload alternative to nuclear, and that's something Japan has in spades, sitting on a subduction zone that could use some cooling down. After all, the Earth is a molten ball of iron and magma with a thin cool skin. Nuclear energy has just been a crazy complex and dangerous way to boil water and make weapons, and using the immense core heat of the planet to supply the "minuscule amount of energy humans actually need" sure seems a lot simpler.

Ed Harris
Ed Harris
10 years ago

After the second hour many people simplistically dismiss the documentary as an "ad" for tesla motors or something to that effect. And then because they feel like they're being "sold to", they completely miss the fact that the documentary is simply highlighting the absolutely historic and revolutionary nature of that car, and everything Elon Musk is doing.

It would be as if you were doing a documentary on the historical impact of Henry Ford right when the Model T debuted in 1908, and people said "oh you're just trying to sell cars, stfu." So in a big way this documentary is just ahead of its time. A few tremendous chapters in history are being written by Elon Musk as we speak...

Ed Harris
Ed Harris
10 years ago

I've seen a lot of documentaries, particularly on nuclear issues, and this documentary basically puts the best of all them and then some into one solid piece. If you could only watch one documentary on nuclear issues, this would be it. It's long, but it covers the actual science in great depth, and at the same time it packs a hell of an emotional punch. I gotta admit I'm a grown man and I wept at parts on this documentary. It is not for the feint of heart.

The second hour is basically the most disturbing thing I've ever seen. Most people cannot imagine the horrors that happen when a countries medical system cannot cope with a nuclear disaster.

But the third hour actually manages to lift you out of that darkness, showing that a really fantastic future is truly at our doorsteps.
So if you're feeling bummed out towards the middle of the documentary just know there is some real light at the end of the tunnel, pretty much just like the documentary said. It almost seems like it might be going over the top warning you twice, but after you're done with the 2nd hour you will know why...

Peace and love to all,

Ed Harris

Harry Nutzack
Harry Nutzack
10 years ago

anyone who has ever wandered into a fluid dynamics lab has seen that a fluid in motion will follow the path of least resistance to flow. that, in case you didn't realize it, means "wind will avoid large scale wind farms if a less resistive path exists". grand scale solar will eventually create a "low temp/low pressure" atmospheric condition above itself due to the lessened radiant heat reflected back into the atmosphere due to the forced cooling of the array. that, in case you never pondered it, means the plant will produce conditions that cause cloud cover to form above it (condensation of vapor in the cooler air). those "free rides" also steal energy from the engines that drive our climate. diminished efficiency through use AND direct impact on the energy that drives weather, both as a result of the "harvesting" method used, would tend to negate their "green" status. tidal power is even worse, as it steals energy from the orbit of our moon.

fossil fuels have obvious negative impacts, finite supply, and increasing costs of both harvesting, and use. the environmental impact of their use is well documented. they are also obviously NOT a viable long term solution to our energy needs.

hydro-electric power is efficient AND cost effective, yet fought tooth and nail by "tree-huggers" (because of the obvious environmental impact of damming rivers), and "paleo-huggers" (as evidenced by the court battles in brazil to prevent construction to "preserve traditional lifestyles of the indigenous tribes"). it also renders vast tracts of land unusable for anything but boating.

so, that leaves ONLY 2 choices: geo-thermal, and nuclear. for those "lucky" enough to live on the slope of a volcano, geo-thermal is a very cost effective, efficient, and (thus far) environmentally benign energy source. but, the vast majority of humanity DON'T occupy the slopes of volcanoes (for what should be fairly obvious historical reasons). that leaves us with "the power of the atom", like it or not, to provide for the energy needs of the majority of humanity. to condemn the technology because the political machinations of the 70s and 80s left much of the world in a position where the ONLY plants in existence are relics of the infancy of the technology is ridiculous.

Alex
Alex
10 years ago

Was this a 3-hour advertisement for Solar City? Or was it a documentary showing that there are many children in Belarus who are suffering from abandonment and poor healthcare. Or was it an anti-nuclear rant? Or was it an encomium for Elon Musk?

It had moments where it felt documentary-like where it seemed to try and present some balance and objectivity, but those moments were fleeting. After viewing many pro- and anti- nuclear documentaries, this one presents very little new information and relies upon the same anti-nuclear non-experts, such as Helen Caldicott and Michio Kaku, as other blogs and videos. And in some balance, uses the opinions of other non-experts such as George Monbiot and Stewart Brand from Pandora's Promise to provide a pro-nuclear bent.

However, the film uses horrible depictions of Belarusian hospitals and orphanages using an onslaught of images of pitiful children suffering from cancer and birth defects. While many of those shown may indeed be suffering from radiation induced health problems such as thyroid cancer, the film disingenuously tries to leave the viewer the impression that a widespread cause of children suffering from poor healthcare is directly attributed to radiation induced problems. It is far from balanced. Viewer be warned: there is a shocking sequence where a crying child is tied to a chair and is given what my un-expert eyes believe was a bloody tonsillectomy without anaesthesia. This provides nothing but shock value and had to turn the screen away from others in the room with me.

There is little original journalistic groundwork in this film and while there are some facts to be presented, they are indistinguishable from the exaggerations and distortions the film largely represents.

Horst Manure
Horst Manure
10 years ago

Reactor 4 has not been inspected as it is running at 1,000 C and melts the cameras..search the USS Ronald Reagan ... think it is too late???

MAllen Documentaires
MAllen Documentaires
10 years ago

People in this forum that support radiation really don't give a $h!+ about the planet , they are more concerned if their 55 inch plasma TV turns on. They will often use words like cheaper,efficient,safer, and every time a serious accident happens they seem to disappear. And that lame excuse about wind and sun not being reliable or easily to store is just another cop out by someone who can't go one day without getting online or using a blow dryer. On those days you stop whining about not being able to use your toaster and just light a candle and read a book like the real men who founded this nation.

englishjakes
englishjakes
10 years ago

considering wind is already cheaper than nuclear, and solar will be cheaper than nuclear in the next 3-4 years i think we will naturally switch to these types of energy it would be pretty dumb not to. Germany at midday actually produces 40-50% of its energy from solar (this includes gas for transportation). the main problem is that most people are misled by the existing power companies because they don't want to go out of business. not a very good documentary though to preachy the best way to get people to change their minds about something is to lead by example, America has been doing it for 100 years why now when we are finally discovering a potentially limitless source of energy Americans are trying to fight this instead of using it to their advantage dumbfounds me. i think america will be left behind if its not careful.

Yo Yo String
Yo Yo String
10 years ago

Try to watch the whole documentary, the tech is not the fault, but the way we human run it is the problem, short cuts nn cost saving leads to trillions of dollars problems......That mom, she got a life sentence to take care of her child, with no fault of her is the problem....Her child wl die but so is her, it is sad.........Profits are short gain long pain......

Fabien L'Amour
Fabien L'Amour
10 years ago

Nonsense, at 44:31, the speaker says Chernobyl caused a million deaths.

Highest number of children diagnosed with Thyroid cancer in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia since the accident I could find was 7000.

Thyroid cancer, a very rare disease in children, can directly be attributed to radiation. The American Cancer Society survival rate for stage 1 and 2 diagnosis for most forms is nearly 100%. Only 2 forms have a survival rate of less then 50% and that is for stage 4 diagnosis.

In the UK, the current annual incidence rate for that cancer is 0.4 cases per 100 000 males aged 15 to 19 years old. (Incidence is 1.5/100000 for females but I used the lowest number) So according to my conservative calculations a minimum of 500 of those 7000 diagnosis would have occurred in Ukraine only without Chernobyl. I didn't bother to calculate for Belarus and Russia but you get the gist. Chernobyl had an effect but it certainly didn't kill 1 million people!

a_no_n
a_no_n
10 years ago

The Cheronobyl disaster is quite difficult to tal about, because every single case of cancer in the area was automatically attributed to the disaster without investigation...If a smoker got lung cancer, Chernobyl got the blame.

Anti-nuclear protesters have used these skewered facts to their advantage ever since then, and it looks like they continue to do so with Fukushima (which remember was hit by a tidal wave and an earthquake and still didn't explode!).

The author of the documentary doesn't even seem to reaise that nuclear power stations and nuclear warheads are powered by two completly different materials.

Weaponised uranium is a highly concentrated substance, it's an expensive and arduous process to turn uranium into a bomb worthy material...this is why North Korea and Iran have had such trouble creating it in the first place.

Nuclear power is the safest and most efficient means of powering the future. And it is pretty much the only thing that makes renewable energy a viable option, dispite the lies, misrepresented facts and misinformation portrayed in this "documentary" which is basicly just a big infomercial for solar power, a technology that is so inefficient at the moment that fully converting the developed world to it would essentially kick us back into the dark ages (literally since the lights would all go out.)

I presume the maker of this documentary has a shed load of shares in a solar panel factory or something.

Michelle
Michelle
10 years ago

It is true that old fashioned nuclear reactors are dangerous, but much better and much safer reactor designs already exist, and are already in operation. The Fukushima and Chernobyl plants were both ancient designs that should have been shut down years ago. A bigger problem is that Uranium is not the best nuclear fuel for power generation because of danger and inefficiency. Thorium power IMHO is the only way we can comfortably solve the energy crisis. Thorium reactors are a LOT less dangerous that Uranium reactors -- they can't melt down at all. The whole world could live the "American" lifestyle for several centuries with Thorium without damaging the earth burning fossil fuels, and we would have the energy to produce and install solar panels and wind and sea turbines everywhere easily. These ignorant fearmongers act as if there are no alternatives to the poorly designed, dangerous, old, outdated, inefficient reactors that were designed and built 40-50 years ago. Furthermore, all uranium reactors create tons of dangerous waste after using only 1% of the energy in the uranium -- 99% of its energy potential is wasted and then usually is improperly stored in barrels. Thorium is 100+ times more efficient per gram because all of it can be used, and there is 4 times as much of it as uranium and no waste disposal issues. Our government cancelled existing and planned Thorium reactors and research only because we can't use them to make nuclear weapons. This decision was made WAY before the energy crisis happened during the early cold war, and it needs to be reversed. Watch the Thorium documentaries and join the movement! IMHO Our military could implement and build and regulate thorium reactors -- after all we don't want just anybody handling nuclear material, and finally bring energy security and peace to this world.

Adam Berger
Adam Berger
10 years ago

The start of this documentary comes off as very disingenuous. It basically says at the start, that watching this will get you into the "heavens". Did god give you that key? If you want free thinking people to hear your point of view you cant lead with, i am god, listen or else!

Your world view is not "Correct". Neither is mine. The world is a constantly changing place that is almost impossible to fully predict. The best we, as people, can do is find a way to provide our knowledge, skill, and passion to help the world.

Nobody has the mind of god. The mind of god is something we are not capable of knowing. God is us. God is matter, God is energy. God is a wacky arm flailing inflatable tubeman spaghetti monster.

Granted i have not watched the film yet, only the beginning, and i may still yet watch it depending on my time frame but 3 hours is a sizable commitment to view a bunch of distorted information.

Anti
Anti
10 years ago

I have never seen such a distressing film... it needs to be compulsorily shown to our supposed leaders ,to ban Nuclear Power immediately...
Corporate power companies need to have their families exposed to this radiation, then lets see if they feel its worth the collateral damage in peoples and land for their profit.

Bob Fearn
Bob Fearn
10 years ago

2 hrs about nuclear screw-ups and a 1 hr Tesla ad plus a bit of solar promotion.