41 Torino Film Festival
The talk held by the great director Oliver Stone organized on Saturday 2 December 2023 at the Massimo Uno venue in Turin, as part of the 41 Torino Film Festival, after the screening of his documentary Nuclear Now (USA, 2023) was outrageous.
No debate was allowed. The audience was prevented from asking questions, or objecting with comments. Cinema has practically nothing to do with this documentary. It is PROPAGANDA.
The documentary by the great director is unworthy, to say the least. It does look like greenwashing new nuclear energy.
MyMovies in 2022 commented "It looks like an advert". An advert lasting 1h45', carried on by the monotonous voice-off of Oliver Stone himself.
It seems like the documentary that a substitute teacher would put on in a school to keep the kids quiet during science class while the tenured teacher is absent.
And, beyond the tedium, the documentary is not harmless: the ideas promoted are alarming and manipulative.
During the talkn following the screening, ample space is given to the sponsor, or rather executive producer, Mr. Stefano Buono who I would define as a "seller of shoddy products". Mr. Stefano Buono is generating success with his company Newcleo, a startup that raises hundreds of millions to build the future nuclear reactor. Saying there is a conflict of interest behind this movie is an understatement... Exor venture capital, the holding company of the Agnelli family, financed Newcleo, so no surprises there.
On stage Mr. Stefano Buono makes hasty and risky statements to the almost 500 people in the audience, when he says what looks like a tacky lie, that "the new nuclear power plant will have no waste" Even the director Oliver Stone, who is there to promote nuclear power by pretending (and certainly deluding himself) that it is an environmentalist energy, tells him that "It's not true, the waste will be there, and it will be managed".
Mr. Oliver Stone is a supporter of this trap, this political business.
Mr. Stefano Buono, sitting by his side, is certainly not in good faith: in addition to brazenly making superficial statements, he is clearly there exclusively to fuel and promote his business.
The panel has the audacity to mention Elon Musk as a heroic protagonist of initiatives that will "save humanity", the brave new frontiers. I'm chocked.
The CO2 balance of nuclear power is certainly better than that of fossil energy (oil), but we are very, very far from being able to believe it credible that nuclear energy can solve the current climate crisis that is collapsing the planet. In fact, there is a large "gray area", not taken into consideration, relating to the extraction / processing of uranium mineral, which is very demanding, because the uranium rocks have a low uranium content and therefore a lot of them have to be moved; as well as the alarming issue of the waste decommissioning and reprocessing / storage phases.
Also, I make an essential point: building a nuclear power plant takes about ten years, while any wind or photovoltaic plant can be put into service in less than a year; ergo, let's start producing wind and photovoltaic energy now, which is essential, given the urgency of an effective response to climate change!
Furthermore, after seventy years of research in the nuke, with substantial contributions from the military, (given the civil and military dual use), we have managed to produce approximately 5% of the world's primary energy, i.e. completely irrelevant.
I believe many are trying to drain public funds by taking advantage of geopolitical tensions, exploiting the objective of energetic independence.
When announcements are made of innovative reactors available in few years, we understand how fraudulent these claims are. The emphasis given to the so-called SMR small modular reactors is laughable: for twenty years they have been trying to sell their nuclear 'engines' to the builders of submarines and aircraft carriers and to promote their mini-power plants to no avail. How credible is this project?
Same old story.
Certainly, science and technology are moving forward.
But there is no ecological salvation in the "new" nuclear.
I completely reject the premise of the documentary by Oliver Stone.
What a shame, Mr. Stone is someone who produced more shareable ideas and important storytelling in the past.
What the 41 Torino Film Festival has done today is to provide a two or three hour- indoctrination of the public, with an audience reduced to complete passivity, without the possibility for the public to make any intervention, militarising the venue with carabinieri and police coming out of their vans, as if in a guerrilla, with guns and handcuffs in plain sight, truly something very bad to watch inside the Film Festival.
It is sad to observe the great director has supported this manipulation.
Among other unlistenable words, Oliver Stone states that he likes Putin very much (and keeps liking him!) and that Putin is a great leader of Russia, much loved by his people.
However, a more honest, more complete and interesting documentary would have been achievable by including a similar analysis on hydrogen production plants from renewable sources, for example with data based on the scaling up that Australia is carrying out, with a de-carbonisation based on renewable energy, with zero emissions and pollution reduction now.
Besides: why don't they compare the touted science fictional nuclear energy project with wind and photovoltaic energy projects buildable today?
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