Film exposes “regulatory capture” of USA’s NRC by the nuclear industry
Sundance Diary: “The Atomic States of America” Turns the Lens on Nuclear Power ONEARTH, BY BRUCE BARCOTT January 26, 2012 “……. The Atomic States of America, a film based partly upon her memoir, Welcome to Shirley.
McMasters’ book chronicled her childhood growing up in a blue-collar Long Island town next to the Brookhaven National Lab, one of the federal government’s leading nuclear research stations. In the 1990s, news broke (thanks to citizen activists and a local newspaper reporter) that Brookhaven’s three reactors regularly leaked deadly nuclear materials into the local water supply.
McMasters didn’t realize what was going on until college, when a roommate asked her, “Why are you always going home to all these funerals? What’s going on there?” The answer: Cancer, cancer, and more cancer.
Atomic States directors Sheena Joyce and Don Argott, who made the documentary Rock School in 2005, expand on McMasters’ material, looking at other nuclear power plant-adjacent communities and their chillingly similar experiences with radioactive leaks.
“At one of the documentary filmmakers forums over the weekend, we talked about this recurring theme of regulatory capture,” McMasters told me. “Again and again, we’re seeing the corporations that are supposed to be regulated take over the regulatory agency through money and politics.”
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