Film Review of Juice: Victory?

Film Review of Juice: Power Politics and the Grid
The Reliability Error | The Commodity Error
The Anti-Human League |  Victory?

Victory?

Could the massively outgunned underdogs win with their slingshots?

While not unequivocally declaring victory, Juice concluded on a high note, ticking off several important and recent wins for pro-nuclear advocates.

Dr. Keefer and his allies recently persuaded the right-leaning Progressive Conservative Party government of Ontario to pursue an expansion of nuclear power.

Shills for weather-dependent wind and solar often deceitfully promise that displaced coal miners and other workers in the hydrocarbon industry can transition to supposed “green” energy jobs. But in Ontario, this really worked for workers at a coal-fired power station who switched over to new careers in a giant nuclear power plant.

Madi Hilly optimistically promoted this as a model for more coal-to-nuclear transitions in North America.

In the United States, there have been two recently successful efforts to save nuclear plants in California and Illinois. Importantly in both cases, the crusades were supported by Democratic governors who found it politically expedient to stand with nuclear advocates and against the massively funded anti-nuclear leftists.

At the most recent Conference of Parties climate talks, the United States and other industrial nations agreed to a goal of substantially increasing nuclear capacity.

Most importantly, the biggest obstacles to a nuclear renaissance are political, not technological or environmental. The people Bryce interviewed did an exceptional job of debunking the scare tactics regarding the radiation risks, the waste produced, and the cost of nuclear power.

Juice forthrightly introduced and addressed the 2011 tsunami and nuclear accident at Fukushima, Japan. The Japanese home islands have now been hit with the only two atomic weapon attacks in history and one of the two most serious atomic energy incidents.

Yet, even they are turning back toward embracing nuclear power.

Robert Bryce is 63 years old. After watching the hopeful conclusion of Juice, I asked him how he felt about advocating for a nuclear-powered world that will take decades to accomplish and likely come to fruition when he isn’t able to see it.

“The nuclear industry didn’t wither over a year or two, it withered over decades,” he replied. “Thus, it’s also true that the nuclear comeback will take decades. That’s all the more reason why the U.S. needs to get dead serious about nuclear right damn now. The U.S. led the Nuclear Age. It can lead the nuclear renaissance, but it will take a focused, bipartisan, long-term commitment from Congress and the states. I believe that can happen.”

Juice concluded with the voice of one of Bryce’s interviewees giving a stirring, almost tear-jerking tribute to human excellence and why that’s worth reaching for. I’m not going to quote it here because those words, like the rest of the series, deserve to be watched and absorbed.

No American can become a responsible adult without first learning the energy facts found in both of Bryce’s Juice projects. But obviously, too many grow up without this advantage, else we wouldn’t be enduring the policy disasters addressed in his latest series. Nearly everyone can learn hard lessons from the new Juice, but happily the message goes down easy.

Juice: Power, Politics and the Grid is streaming for free on YouTube.