Decommissioning Fukushima 2024: Roadmap on the Brink

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.

Documentary which follows the construction of a trailblazing 36,000-tonne steel structure to entomb the ruins of the nuclear power plant destroyed in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

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.

This short documentary offers a look at Canada’s Chalk River Project in the late 1940s. While humanity pondered the ultimate threat or promise of atomic energy, Chalk River scientists worked on the first set of experiments that attempted to apply atomic energy to medical and biological uses. Inside the Atom examines this frontier of science and assesses its value in terms of human progress.

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.

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.

In October 1957, one of the Windscale nuclear reactors caught fire. It was the world's first nuclear accident, attributed to the rush to build atomic weapons. This programme highlights the mistakes leading to a nuclear event which, 40 years on, still takes second place only to Chernobyl.

Wolsong: Vanishing Town

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.

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.

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.

In a quiet forest, a sign warns of radiation hazard. “Is this the past or the future?” muses the masked figure who appears like a kind of ghost in nuclear disaster areas. At a time when nuclear power may be re-emerging as an alternative to fossil fuels, this calmly observed and compelling tour takes us to places that may serve as a warning.

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.

In October 2023, a European research team succeeded in generating an enormous amount of energy from very little fuel. A success that fusion research had been working towards for around 70 years. Now the competition for a fusion reactor has been reignited. What role can electricity from nuclear fusion play in the future?

Nuclear has always been a controversial energy source. While Germany is phasing out its nuclear power plants, France is building a new generation of nuclear reactors to keep the lights on. A look at the nuclear debate over the last few decades and what the future holds for atomic energy.

Who is Kim Yo-jong? In a context of maximum tensions between North Korea and the United States, Pierre Haski paints an unprecedented portrait of the little sister of Kim Jong-un, whose influence in Pyongyang is growing stronger day by day.

Since the first film was made explaining the power of the atom, nuclear technology has made great advances. This film is an up-to-date account of the many areas of nuclear research and recent developments in Canada. It was filmed at the long-functioning atomic reactors at Chalk River and Rolphton, and at the latest and largest atomic power station at Pickering, as well as at laboratories across the land where experimentation is carried out in both pure and applied nuclear science. Produced for the NFB by Crawley Films Ltd. for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

The success of this first full-scale nuclear power station on the shores of Lake Huron has shown the way for the economic large-scale production of electricity from uranium. This film describes the plant at Douglas Point, Ontario, and the process by which the uranium atom is split, employing heavy water with a special property, deuterium, giving the name CANDU (Canada Deuterium Uranium) to the Canadian system of atomic energy production. Produced for the NFB by Crawley Films Ltd. for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

East of Toronto on the shore of Lake Ontario, is the Pickering Generating Station, one of the world's largest nuclear power stations. Here it is used to explain how a nuclear power station works, showing the fuel bundles, calandria, fuelling machines, boilers, control room, turbine-generator and spent fuel bay. Part of the multimedia kit The Energy Crisis?. Produced by the NFB for Energy, Mines and Resources Canada.

A look at what has been happening of late in Canada's nuclear laboratories where new uses of atomic energy are being pioneered. The film shows the earlier reactors at Chalk River and the reactions that take place between heavy water and natural uranium. Here, too, is seen the production of radioactive isotopes for use in medicine, agriculture, industry. At the Douglas Point prototype power station, the film explains how nuclear energy makes electricity. A film for science student or layman. Produced by Crawley Films Ltd. for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.