Ten years ago, the Labour government under Tony Blair gave the go-ahead for a new generation of nuclear power stations to be built in Britain. It was a remarkable about-turn from the outcome of the energy white paper just three years earlier, which had kicked nuclear into the long grass, emphasising instead a push for renewables and energy efficiency. As a film-maker who’d grown up in the 1980s and whose chief memories of nuclear power were of the catastrophic accident at Chernobyl, I felt compelled to investigate. How had this power source that I knew only as a byword for danger and disaster managed to pull off such a stunning reinvention as the clean, green saviour of climate change? Answering that question has taken me on a decade-long film-making journey as I’ve delved into the history and politics of this most controversial energy source, not just in Britain, but in the US, France and Germany too. And what I discovered was like something out of a soap opera — a fairy-tale romance that developed into a turbulent, on-off relationship whose drama continues to play out to this day. Vicki Lesley is a documentary director from Brighton. She is currently crowdfunding to cover final post-production costs on her film The Atom: A Love Affair. To support the film visit www.tennerfilms.com/donate
Morning Star 22nd July 2016 read more »