Nuclear Now

Nuclear Now is a documentary in which Oliver Stone examines nuclear power as a response to climate change and energy poverty. Granted access to the nuclear industries of France, Russia and the United States, the film looks at how uranium holds a highly concentrated form of energy, and how science first put that energy to use in weapons and submarines before turning it toward electricity generation. Much of the film addresses why nuclear power stalled as a civilian energy source: a long-running public relations effort, partly financed by coal and oil interests, that played on fears of accidents. Stone argues that expanding nuclear energy is necessary if the world is to move away from fossil fuels.

Stone directed the film and wrote the screenplay with Joshua S. Goldstein; Fernando Sulichin produced it. Stone himself appears on screen, and the film runs 106 minutes. It is the twenty-first of the twenty-two features he has directed, arriving between JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass in 2021 and Lula in 2024, a stretch that shows him working in documentary rather than narrative form.

Released in April 2023, the film drew a modest but clearly favorable response: on IMDb it holds a rating of 7.2 from around 1,100 votes, and on TMDB a rating of 7.1 from roughly two dozen votes. The similar figures suggest viewers who sought it out generally found it worthwhile, though the small vote totals indicate a limited audience.