 new documentary film, Nuclear, which is very relevant for such a venue. We have a bright blue glowing atom on the front, and this is the first nuclear-themed pavilion at a cop ever in history. So the film is very relevant, and it's coming at a very timely time here in the climate crisis and also in the energy crisis that we're moving into. So my first question to Oliver. So you've made some very successful films over the years, and you haven't shied away from controversial topics. So what was it about nuclear and doing a documentary on this film that really stood out? Why did you decide to go ahead with the documentary? My sense of fear and my sense of responsibility. My films have always been about things that matter to me. This is the most important issue in the world. I see nothing more important than solving, cleaning up this thing, and by 2050, as it says in the film, the IPCC plays out, we believe them and we go with the 2050 date. So we're not fooling around. We say 30 years. In 2020 they said 30 years. We got 30 years. So how do we do it in 30 years? That was how practically can it get done? We can talk about renewables from here to, you know, and they're fine. We like them. We like hydro, hydro, hydro power, but we want to get to know what the volume is, and this is the answer as far as I can see. Nuclear is the only way to do it with volume. My colleague, Josh, who's with us, is prepared to wrote a book about it with his partner, Stefan Kavist, who's a Swedish scientist. It lays it all out in dry terms. We tried to put it into film terms. As you can see, it's a difficult film, but I think it's well worth. You learn a lot in those hour and 40 minutes. You learn a lot. You really do. And I think everyone in the room, you know, you got an innovation, and it went down very well. I think I didn't know anything about nuclear power. I was scared of it like everyone else, and the problem in America anyway. I can't speak for the world. In America, and in France too, they're scared to some degree. So this is a film to calm those fears. So you actually just jumped into my next question, actually. So I wanted to know, what period did you realize that nuclear was not something to be afraid of? Was there a specific moment or experience that kind of changed your mind, or conversation that changed your mind on this? Well, no. Once I read the book, that changed my mind in 2019. Absolutely. And the book was highly recommended, by the way. The reason I saw it was in the New York Times of all places, in a book review, a very positive book review from Richard Rhodes, who I very much respect. All the scientists I've talked to, we went around to Russia, we went to France, we went to the Idaho National Lab, we traveled, we talked to scientists, nuclear experts, and we talked to some people who hate it, you know, too, just to hear their point of view. So I tried to get a general feeling for it, but I say that the book itself and the travel to these places, like in Russia, you can talk to the head of the Rosatom and he'll tell you point blank that it's the extra lung for the universe. We've got to move forward on energy. And unfortunately, the timing is terrible because we have a land war in Europe, and it had, which has nothing to do with what we have to do as people with this is waste of time. And it's a distraction from what we should be doing, which is building, building, like an industrial production, stamping out airplanes. And it's another industry. Josh, you can fill in the details, please. Well, I could jump in here from the book point of view, what the film does and the reason I think it's so great to go from book to a film is that the film is more emotional. It hits this spot where the fear lives in us. And the book can't do that. I don't think any book can. You show the graphs, you give the data, you give all the information, people take it in. But it lives in their brain, kind of coexisting with their pre existing ideas and misconceptions and fears. And you can't really displace it. But a film can get in there to our emotional side to to not only shine a light and make people understand better, but to see and feel that this is a tremendous opportunity, nuclear power, to to be able to really solve this problem that we've all been despairing about, because we're just not on track to solve it climate change. Yes. Okay, and you talk about and obviously the film is ends up being very pro nuclear as a strong position. And you just mentioned then Oliver that during the making of the film, you spoke to kind of both sides of the argument. From your conversations with, let's say, the skeptics or those that aren't quite sure, how did that shape the direction of the film? What of the film? How did that shape the direction of the film, like those conversations? And Well, it was clear from the beginning that people were scared of it. And this is a residue from the 1970s. The let's call it the elite class is taught to be terrified of nuclear power. Mike, you're not hearing me. So we need to turn the volume up in the room, but please continue. I'm sorry. So it's wrong to say that we're only proposing nuclear power. We're proposing all out effort. But the problem has been since 2020. I'm using rough estimates here is that we put several trillions of dollars into renewables, governments have in the West, the United States has and several others, Germany, certainly. And it hasn't worked because the CO2 levels have just gone up and risen up. We can explain we explain that in the film. Why? So the only way we can cut the CO2 is just doing it. And that's getting rid of it. Now, there's other ways there's other ways to do it. There's obviously carbon removal. There's all kinds of techniques. But what works really works, we know works is a clean energy like nuclear. So it's it's not like only nuclear, we're saying, but you better put some nuclear in your show. The United States, for example, is a sorry example, they keep putting more and more money into renewables, but they're not looking at the results. They are developing more putting more money into nuclear now because of Biden has made an effort. But even the Department of Energy, we talked to them, they're scared of it. They don't want to make it a political issue because they're, you know, everyone's they're politicians and they at the end of the day, they they don't want to be chased away from it. And so they always make these modest statements and they but they're not doing enough to really put money into this thing and build, build, build. In America, as you know, it's a lot of private money. Okay, and you told them about it's not only about just building nuclear and the renewables can go a long way, but it's not quite enough. And it needs that that firm base load, particularly the movie mentions the deep decarbonization in particular. So Joshua, a question for you just our experience, you know, in the coffin in a lot of climate change conversations. Sometimes it's put as a maybe a false dichotomy that, you know, it's people trying to take this black and white decision. It's all renewables, or it's all nuclear. You know, what do you say to those people that think that we can do this with 100% renewables and that we don't need nuclear? Well, it's when you say it's not quite enough. I think that's a that's an overstatement of the what you can get out of renewables, which is a funny category. Anyway, we should be talking about clean energy. The renewables so called is mostly hydro, but people are really talking about wind and solar. It's a confused discussion. But at the bottom line, when you add it all up and do the math, you can only get about halfway to the goal, something like that, with all the efforts that we're making and the energy efficiency and, you know, lifestyle change and all these things. You're only getting halfway there at best. And and then you look in your bag of tricks and what's left? What's in there that that could work? And there's nuclear power. Then you look at France, which in 15 years, as we say in the film, took fossil fuels off the grid, put on nuclear. We know this works. It's a proven model. And there are other things. Yeah, Oliver mentioned, you know, sequestration. I like advanced geothermal. I like carbon capture on methane plants. They're all kind of out there as possibilities. But here we have a proven method. It's really fast. It's really scalable. And it's cheap. And we know all that from the French experience. So this is what we should be doing all out. And it's just fear getting in our way. And there's also at the end of the last part of the film, we go into the future. And we talk about what nuclear can achieve in other fields, among them in industry and agriculture. Once you get this heat built up in the nuclear reactors, you can use that heat. It's a lot of heat to combine with, for example, hydrogen in many creative ways. Hydrogen is a very positive future drug, a future drug. It's a future way to really solve things. But in combination with nuclear, hydrogen in combination with less, less heat, let's say with non nuclear products is not the same thing as in combination with nuclear. I'm sounding perhaps not like a scientist, but perhaps you could translate that, Josh. Yeah, well, the last part of the film, as you just saw, goes into the applications in industry, transportation, building heat, those are all big, those are producing more emissions than just electricity. So it tends to be, and pardon me, because we're across the world looking in from the outside at the cops. But it seems like most of the discussion is about electricity. And really most of the action is in the developed countries, the richer countries of the world. And that's about 10% of the emissions problem. So the majority of emissions are not from electricity, it's from these other parts of the economy. And the majority of the growth of emissions in the next 30 years, by far, is coming from the poorer countries. You know, especially China, but India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, big, poor countries that are coming up, people are coming out of poverty. And they need energy, they need electricity. I like to say the only thing worse than a coal plant is not having a coal plant. You know, if the coal plant is what they have, that's what they're going to make. And but if we have something else that works, that's cheap, that's, that's going to work for their economy, but doesn't produce the carbon emissions, then they'll use that. And that's nuclear power. So we have to reach the whole world, we have to reach all these sectors of the economy, which nuclear can do, especially with the advanced reactors, higher temperature reactors. And we need to do it really fast. So we need to scale up here and start building out very quickly. Okay, I think you've had a really good point there that a lot of people who are very passionate about climate change and decarbonizing the energy system, they confuse electricity with energy. And that electricity, as you've just mentioned, is only a small part of our total energy use. And they're actually getting decarbonizing that that rest of our energy use beyond the electricity is actually the more difficult part. Electricity decarbonization should be the easy part. So that just moves me on to my my next question. So there's a lot of climate advocates in the room here and there'll be a lot more people listening online. And once the movie comes out, a lot of people are passionate about nuclear power. Have you got any advice for, you know, these advocates and how they communicate and talk about nuclear power in these kind of climate change circles? Well, certainly, we want to contribute to the argument by if the film is going to be seen. And unfortunately, we're just starting to distribute it. We're getting to these conferences like yours. I mean, we want we want reactions. We want the the word of mouth to build about the film. And it's as Josh said, it's about the world. It's not about just the United States. The United States is backward in a way. It's like, frankly, Russia and China are more advanced in the development of nuclear energy. The American model is private, privately government puts some money in private private interests carry the rest. I mean, we see Bill Gates doing his billions and billions of dollars into his company, Natrium and so forth and so on. But it's a bit of a hot spot. You know, it's not directed like it as it is in China or in the United or in Russia. So ideally, yes, there'd be no war. And ideally, we'd be partners in this adventure because we're all very smart. These countries are brilliant and they can lead the way. These three countries could have been partners, but unfortunately, we don't want to get into politics. Anyway, that happened. Let's we have to we have to ride this out and think about our future collectively. The Josh is making a big point and we made it in the film again and again. These third world countries, second world countries, they want energy. They're going to want the same things we want. And that's coming. And then the need for electricity that we estimate in the film is going to be call it two to five times the amount of electricity we use now. Electricity is a big part of it. It's a third of it. I mean, we also have you have a transportation, you have agriculture, but there's don't underestimate electricity. My advice for nuclear advocates is number one, to be more ambitious, far more ambitious. We spend a lot of time fighting little battles to keep this reactor open or to build one reactor here or there. And we need to be thinking bigger scale, you know, larger scale, big build out mass production. We have to take the industry from a construction model to a manufacturing model where we can make these things centrally, ideally in shipyards and then float them to where they're going. It looks like China will be the while Russia was the first one they've done one. But in terms of a mass product that's cheap, it'll probably be China. But the United States could be doing that. There's no reason and Europe could be doing that. And then also to be to not be on the defensive, because the anti nuclear crowd always will pick at you and you get into little nitpicky battles that are not going to advance the cause. And you're never going to change some people's mind. But to not be on the defensive and don't talk about safety, how safe everything. It's already the safest form of energy by far that we have. And the idea that we're going to make it safer. Now you can really believe it's safe. People just think it's dangerous if you keep saying how safe it is. It's unfortunate that it's so safe that nothing ever happens in most countries. And then people think if anything happens. You know, it's like a disaster. But it's clearly not true. You know, if we had some accidents and there would be some accidents if we have a large scale build out, we have to accept that there will be some problems. There'll be some setbacks. There'll be some people may be exposed to radiation, especially low level radiation, which won't be that harmful. But you know, get on the level of any other energy source, any other piece of the economy where we, you know, it generates waste. You put it in the ground. It has accidents. People get hurt, but you've got to compare compared to what right now it's compared to coal. That's the main way we make electricity in the world. And that's the main source of our emissions also. So and compared to and compared to what? Climate change to climate change is going to be far worse than coal. In terms of casualties, it already is. The amount of casualties per production in production of of nuclear is the lowest of all. Coal is way up there. Well, gas, oil, even hydroelectric is more dangerous. So in making the film, we had to choose, are we going to go through this litany of alleged sins and bat them all down like no, it really is safe and the waste isn't a problem and so forth. Or instead, we decided to take a more proactive and positive look at the whole technology and not be on the defensive and hope that comes through in the film. I think it comes through very clearly. It's articulated really well in the film. So we genuinely really hope a lot of people get to see the movie soon. So I just got two short one short question eats for you. And then we're going to take just one or two questions from some of the young climate activists in the room. If that's OK. So my first one is Oliver and just because you said that, you know, you didn't really, you came to nuclear a few years ago only. What was the most during the research and the making of the movie? What was like the one most aspect of nuclear or the film that really surprised you the most during during your film process? I mean, an anecdote about what happened to us. Just just the most surprising fact or conversation that you had. I'm constantly learning constantly from the book through the process of talking to all these scientists and the head of Rosatom in Russia. The in France is EDF. They were most cooperative. The French. They really have, as you know, there's a they have a current problem. Yes, it's another nitpicking thing. But some of their reactors are down because of corrosive pipes. But, you know, that's a typical thing where the new the media raises the issue of nuclear is a problem because it's got corrosive pipes. Of course it does because it's been operating for 50 years 60 years. So these things are all fixable. And that's the nature of any industry that starts up when the Wright brothers were flying airplanes. They just started. They went 10 feet, 15 feet, 50 feet. You know, you got to work your way up. And that's what we've been doing since 1970s. The we've already made so many improvements. And now we're working on this not we, I mean, I mean, but as we're working on SM SMR as small modular reactors. And there's many different types of that. China has one. Russia has one. It's fascinating. And this, of course, it produces less. But this is perhaps a way to get into it even on a mass level because people are less, let's call it frightened of a of a small SMR than they are of a gigantic Westinghouse build in Georgia. Thank you. And Joshua, I just wanted to know how did it feel when, you know, and were you surprised when you kind of got the call of email about that all of the stone was interested in and turning building a documentary of your of your book? Well, sure, I was thrilled, of course. And of course, I didn't have any idea what I was getting in for. And it did go for quite a while. The process was something I was completely unfamiliar with. And honestly, at the end, so I put in a lot of ideas and suggestions. Some of them were accepted. Some of them I never heard back and so forth. But at the end of the whole process, when I watched, they finally put the last thing was called the end crawl with the all the credits of who had worked on the film. And I was really surprised to see how many people had been involved in turning this into an actual movie. I don't know if it's 100 people or or what, but lots of names that people I didn't know anything about never met. And you realize that it takes a lot to make a film. And that's a tribute to Oliver that he does that does that work and and the film comes out the other end. Because for me as an author, it's kind of me and the book and the and the, you know, other professors or something. It's a lot simpler. Your book was very important. It's one of the most clearest books to read. It's short, clear. And I have to say, you get I get I'm not a scientific person. But Jesus, I was constantly tested on this thing. This thing went from one year to two years. This was at times very tedious and important to nail down everything specifically, numbers, facts. And we also have in the film, you know, we don't do any interviews, except yeah, we do an interview, a walking interview with a couple of scientists. Aside from that, we're very interesting people. But aside from that, we wanted to stay away from the talking head form. OK, thank you. So now we're just going to go to a couple of the younger climate activists in the room. So first, I'd like to invite any from Nigeria to ask a quick question. Thank you. I think it was an awesome documentary. And my first question goes to I have two short questions. The first one goes to Oliver. I really want to know what he you set to achieve in making the documentary. Is it to just a documentary or to educate or influence? I really want to know what you wanted achieving in making this documentary. And the second one, just a short one, is I really want you to tell me the role of Africa in this whole nuclear power program. What do you think about Africa? Thank you. I'm what I wanted to achieve is impact because I care about my children, their children, the whole world. I mean, I think this is going to lead to huge changes and revolutions and political upheaval. There will be chaos. And I want to try to help prevent that and preserve what we have as a civilization because I do think despite all our problems, our civilization in the world is amazing. And we have diversity, richness inside it. We have different points of view. But it's all, it has to go on because I think we're, it's important for the future. I just feel that. Very important. You're going to take humanity out of the equation, but I don't know if it's going to go on. The world will go on. Yes, no question about it. Just isn't, it's a planet. But what kind of a world it will be? Africa is a huge role here. And we give Asia, Africa, the Middle East, they have to get on the nuclear bandwagon. And it was a perfect, frankly, it's a great example if the, let's call it the first world powers were to really unite in their thinking they could make Africa a huge sample. They could, by putting nuclear heavily into Africa, into various countries, we can see the results inside a few years. And that's, it's a great example of changing things. And Africa could be a leader in showing the world, hey, we can do it clean. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Oliver. And next we have Anna from Spain. Hello. Hello, Anna. First place, I would like to thank you for doing this incredible documentary that I think is going to be quite useful to make people change, see that the reality about the nuclear energy. So my question is to both Oliver and Joshua. I come from Spain, as Craig has said. And I'm currently working in France. And I think that after advocating for nuclear and having participated in the movement standard for nuclear, I felt that at least in these two countries, there's like one of the problems regarding public acceptance of nuclear energy is that it represents this type of centralized energy production, like this huge power plants with big gigantic elements. And I think that's scary to people, like it's a high density centralized energy production, which is controlled by the state of big companies. I think this is one of the problems of public acceptance. And my question is, how will you deal with the public on this, especially in Europe? I think this is maybe the problem. Do you think that in the future, the future of nuclear energy is going to be, is it going to change regarding this, maybe like a bit more unlocalized type of energy production? Yes, well, that's, that's, they're moving in that direction with SMRs, which are smaller and less threatening. But you know, you do need the big industry. I don't see what's wrong with big industry. If you, everything in our world, we have construction, we have, look at the turbines that they're building. These are gigantic turbines. It takes money. It takes concentration of capital. It takes big companies to do things and they can do things well. You have a kind of an instinctive fear of big companies, which has been, has been, let's say, it's been in the wind for since 1970s since they took on the nuclear power industry and they took on pollution and all this, but they confused the issue. They, they, they confused nuclear power with nuclear weapons. And that was a huge, it's a huge difference. The enriched uranium in the bomb is what makes a difference. But the nuclear power industry is nowhere close to those levels. But somehow people get, you know, and now because of the Ukraine thing, everyone's getting back into the, oh, nuclear bombs again. It's really mistaken and it puts the whole cause back. Josh, you have something to say about this? One of the problems with public perception of nuclear is that everybody thinks that they like nuclear, but nobody else does. In other words, the discourse, it's, it's an emperor's new clothes situation. You know, the people are actually supportive. The majority of the population in the United States is supportive of nuclear and in France, but you'd never know it from how the journalists portray it. So I think we have a lot of work to do with journalists to get them to catch up with the public, frankly. One of the great things about nuclear power in the United States and somewhat different in other countries, different spin on it, but it's, it's got bipartisan support. In other words, support from across different sectors of the population that don't necessarily agree on other things, even on climate change or on other climate solutions. So in the U.S., we, you know, the Congress, both sides, both parties support nuclear power. And so if you want to solve climate change, that's the place to push where you can make some progress. You're not going to get into the old gridlocks, the usual political divides. And so I think that's very hopeful, but as long as the media keeps portraying that nobody likes nuclear power, everybody's scared of nuclear power, you can't get there. Now, as far as people's fears go, I always say people will stop being afraid of it when it costs two cents per kilowatt hour. In other words, when it's very, very cheap, everybody's going to love it. Even, and they'll forget they were ever afraid of it because we need it and it's so great and we're doing these things. Think about Africa, you know, what Africa could do with electricity at two cents a kilowatt hour. But as long as we're, you know, having discussion about is it scary, isn't it scary and not actually having it be cheap enough to roll out around the world, then you have to get the journalists around to support it better. Which they, it's very difficult to do that because they tend to be skeptical. So every art, most of the, two thirds of the articles I read about nuclear power start with in the first or second paragraph, they talk about the dangers, the dangers. Well, I don't see them talking about the dangers of oil. I don't see them talking about the dangers of coal when they raise those issues. They just say coal and oil. But there's this bias and it keeps, it's really screwing up our perception of a solution. The solution is there. Let's do it. Let's do it well. Let's do it with the spirit of Hymen Rickover as we said in the film. Thank you very much. I'd like to give a shout out to you young nuclear activists in the room there because you're doing great work and we do see it around the world. I really, really appreciate all that you're doing. Young people do have a different point of view. The older people are, young people are more scared of climate change than they are of nuclear war, I think. That's what one of the people in the film says. They have a different perspective. We have to solve this thing. We have to be grown ups about it. We've got to get over these nonsense fears of ghost stories, ghost stories. Thank you. And just one last quick question from Matthew from Canada before we wrap up. I know we're short on time. Thank you. So Matthew from Canada. I'm from Ontario, which is one of the greenest grids right now. And we, as mentioned in your film, did a rapidly phase out call. So vice president of North American young generation of nuclear. And thank you for the film. You know, every time at these climate conferences, we have to start essentially where you started from talking about the waste, talking about the safety, talking about the positives. Any thought about a future book or documentary, maybe talking about irrigation, talking about desalinization, talking about medical isotopes, all the other non-power uses of nuclear that are hitting the sustainable development goals. We talk about it at the end of the film and we showed you all the diversification uses of it. Josh? Oh, I think there's two ways I can think of to get into the topic that are not the usual approach and that remind people that they already know something about nuclear that they're not scared of. And one that we did in the film is through the Navy, the submarines, the aircraft carriers and people are familiar with those and see that it works. And the other is through medical isotopes and all the use of nuclear in medicine, which people don't associate with the power industry, but it's another way that you think you're scared of a nuclear plant, but then you go in for radiation treatment and you're cancering, you're pretty glad to have it. So we haven't explored that one, but that's another way into it. Yeah, I think that would be a really great way to get more positive messaging around nuclear. So thank you so much. Yeah, I know you're making those isotopes in Ontario too, so thank you. Okay, I think we're out of time. So Oliver, Joshua, I just want to say thank you so much for joining us here at the Atoms for Climate Pavilion at COP 27. Congratulations on the movie. I think it's fantastic. You did a really good job, and I wish you all success with the movie Moving Forward. Thank you for happiness. Thank you for addressing this issue. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. Thank you.