While nuclear energy generation will never be without risks, proponents argue these are manageable and small compared to the risk of increased greenhouse gases that are warming the planet. Nuclear meltdowns like Chernobyl in Russia, Three Mile Island in the US, and Fukushima in Japan are burned into the collective consciousness and serve as constant reminders of the dangers of nuclear power that drive the anti-nuke movement. When nuclear power goes wrong, the fallout is catastrophic. But it also leaves a lot of radioactive waste that needs to be incinerated, encased in concrete, or buried deep underground for centuries. One uranium pellet weighing just 6 grams produces the same amount of energy as a tonne of coal. When it works the nuclear reaction is an efficient form of energy creation. Stronium-90 and cesium-137, contained in nuclear waste, have half-lives of about 30 years, but plutonium-239 takes 24,000 years to fully decay. But the downside of conventional nuclear power stations is the nuclear reaction also produces plutonium, which is highly radioactive, and other wastes, causing a problem for disposal. Visualized as a giant kettle, the heat generated from the pellets boils water to create steam, which turns turbines to generate electricity. In a conventional nuclear reactor, the pressurized water reactor, fuel rods containing uranium pellets are placed in water. The nuclear chain reaction that creates energy starts when U-235 splits or “fissions”, which produces a lot of heat in a controlled environment. In a nuclear reactor, several hundred fuel assemblies containing thousands of small pellets of uranium oxide are in the reactor core. To make nuclear fuel from uranium ore, the uranium is first extracted from the rock, then enriched with the uranium-235 isotope, before being made into pellets that are loaded into assemblies of nuclear fuel rods. Uranium is the fuel needed to create the nuclear reaction that can either make nuclear power or nuclear weapons. That has some turning to nuclear fusion as part of a cleaner, safer future, even though the science behind the creation of nuclear power is the same as that used to generate nuclear weapons. There is increasing awareness that clean energy solutions for future generations have to be developed now. Nowadays, the threat to the planet is environmental, not nuclear. Forty years after ‘If You Love This Planet’, a new generation of school children has never even seen, let alone worried about, a nuclear explosion or attack. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the lifting of the “Iron Curtain” in 1989 ushered in an era of nuclear peace. The subsequent uproar over that action gave the film a publicity boost, and it later won the 1982 Academy Award for Best Documentary. The facility produced tritium for the nation's nuclear arsenal until safety concerns halted production in 1990.Released during the Reagan administration at the height of Cold War nuclear tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, ‘If You Love This Planet’ was officially designated as “foreign political propaganda” by the United States Department of Justice and temporarily banned. Savannah River, South Carolina, became the site for the nation's hydrogen bomb production facility the following year. Truman announced work on the hydrogen bomb was to continue. They made direct approaches to the military and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. A group of scientists led by Edward Teller supported its development. However the Cold War was beginning to escalate. Fermi and Rabi wrote, 'Since no limit exists to the destructiveness of this weapon, its existence and knowledge of its construction is a danger to humanity as a whole.' Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and I.I. Edward Teller, who had explored the idea of a 'super' during the Manhattan Project, supported its development. The scientific community split over the issue of building a hydrogen bomb. There is no limit on the yield of this weapon. In this type of bomb, deuterium and tritium (hydrogen isotopes) are fused into helium, thereby releasing energy. After the Soviet atomic bomb success, the idea of building a hydrogen bomb received new impetus in the United States.

Hydrogen bomb