Review of The Atomic States of America (2012) by Janet M — 12 Jul 2015

This documentary is illuminating regarding to some areas regarding nuclear production that need better levels of safety. It also shows very well how government agencies sometimes don't do their jobs well, regarding nuclear safety. So, in this aspect, the documentary is a valuable contribution. I also am concerned about the sites where nuclear plants have been built and are found near fault lines. This is the reason why I don't favor the nuclear option in Puerto Rico, since we are in a seismic area.

Yet, the documentary loses me when it states very deceptive pseudo-scientific statements such as: no degree of radiation is acceptable. Really?! Then we are toast, given that cosmic rays, the sun, the Earth itself and the oceans, all of them have levels of radiation that bombard us each day. If every form of radiation were bad for us, we wouldn't be here! As a matter of fact, not only many forms of radiation destroyed lives, but they have *saved* lives as well.

The documentary criticizes the belief that Fukushima will be livable again. Actually yes! The chromium that came out of the fallout has a very short half-life (27.7 days), and it will diminish significantly as time goes by. Finally, the documentary also relies too heavily on anecdotal evidence, ignoring the scientific reports regarding the areas where there are allegations of high incident rates of cancer close to nuclear reactors. In fact, in many of the cases, there is no link at all to low-level radiation exposure. All of the tritium and radioactive material being leaked from reactors is so amazingly small, that (paraphrasing Gwyneth Cravens) you can get more radiation from eating a banana with one radioactive isotope, than if you drank all of the water that came out of a reactor in one day.

Again, I think that those who don't like the nuclear option (including many respectable scientists) can make a much better contribution this very important debate. I watched this in my hope of learning something new that might change my mind about nuclear. This documentary (as most documentaries I've seen) is not a reliable source to do that. Not only relies on anecdotes, but it is essentially argument from emotion. It is more a piece of propaganda with very little science to support it.