Film review: Atomic Hope suggests a heretical solution to the climate crisis
Atomic Hope (12A) is a documentary from writer-director Frankie Fenton
★★★★☆
(12A) is a documentary from writer-director Frankie Fenton that offers an ostensibly heretical proposition: that atomic energy is the only real solution to climate crisis.
Fenton is fully aware of the counter-intuitive nature of the proposal, opening the film with images of the devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki while the Japanese scientist Moto-Yasu Kinoshita speaks with considerable understatement about his country’s ‘complex relationship’ with atomic power.
Nor does Fenton shy away from depicting the consequences of atomic meltdown — one section of film, simply titled ‘Disaster’, revolves around an extended visit to Chernobyl.
But as Fenton interviews a variety of scientists and activists who constitute the ‘pro-nuclear movement’, the message is repeated again and again: if the world wishes to ‘decarbonise our energy systems’, and in time to prevent irreversible damage to the planet, then the carbon-free energy of nuclear power is the only realistic option.
It’s a fascinating film, one in which the facts and statistics in favour of nuclear energy chip away at the monolithic belief that atomic power is a dangerous and dirty source of power that leads inevitably to Armageddon.
It probably won’t change your mind, but the provocatively titled is a thought-provoking film that deserves a hearing.
(cinema release)
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