
Danger Zone: Ageing Nuclear Reactors
After the Fukushima meltdown, this film turns its attention to the United States, where dozens of nuclear reactors built in the 1960s and 1970s are still running decades past their original design life. Engineers, regulators, and safety advocates lay out the case that aging pipes, embrittled containment vessels, and outdated safety assumptions could produce an American version of the Japanese disaster. The film visits plants operating on extended licenses, questions why the Nuclear Regulatory Commission keeps approving lifespan extensions, and examines near-miss incidents that raised alarms inside the industry itself. Footage of control rooms and cooling towers is paired with interviews from former plant workers and independent scientists who argue that cost pressures push utilities to keep old reactors running rather than replace them. The film does not claim a meltdown is imminent, but it builds a sober argument that the margin for error at some sites is narrower than regulators admit, and that the lessons of Fukushima have not been fully absorbed at home.