Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island recounts the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown, known as the worst commercial nuclear power meltdown in U.S. history, and how the government tried to minimize the disaster to the public. It follows four mothers from Pennsylvania who took their community’s case to the Supreme Court.
Heidi Hutner, an associate professor of English and sustainability at Stony Brook University, made her directorial debut with the film in 2022 — and the documentary has only become more relevant today.
Earlier this year, Governor Kathy Hochul began looking to invest in advanced nuclear reactors to meet the energy needs of New York while reducing its carbon footprint. Microsoft also hopes to reopen the closed nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island to power its artificial intelligence data centers.
Yet, stories like the Three Mile Island incident make Hutner hesitant to promote nuclear as a renewable energy solution. Even when a nuclear facility operates normally, radiation is still released. She argues that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not provide adequate oversight for safety measures, and the cost and time to build new nuclear power facilities hinders the technology from being a viable climate change energy solution.
The nuclear industry also is bound up in environmental racism, as facilities require uranium — most of which is extracted from communities of color and Indigenous lands, and studies have found that the rate of childhood leukemia increases around these facilities.
“[Ionizing] radiation is emitted from every nuclear power plant,” Hutner said after a recent screening at Stony Brook. “It is legal to do so … but you will not see this information anywhere. And, we have not found a safe way to store the radioactive waste produced by nuclear facilities.”
Stony Brook’s Collaborative for the Earth hosted Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island for a “Science and Cinema” event on February 26. Hutner invited Cynthia Folkers, a radiation and health hazards specialist from the nonprofit Beyond Nuclear, to join her after the screening for a Q&A session with students and faculty.
Hutner’s interest in nuclear energy and nuclear weapons started when she had lunch with an old family friend, Phyllis Resnick, in 2009. Resnick recounted how countries around the world were conducting nuclear bomb tests above-ground during the 1950s. The United States, in particular, detonated a hundred bombs in the Nevada desert and 67 bombs in the Marshall Islands. The U.S. government insisted that the fallout stayed within the test site area, but scientists were skeptical, including Louise Reiss, Linus Pauling and Barry Commoner.
To uncover the truth, Reiss and her team collected and studied baby teeth across the country. They found radioactive elements in these teeth, including those that came far from the Nevada desert. Among these elements was strontium-90, which the body takes up as calcium.
When mothers heard these results, they quickly organized and formed a group called Women Strike for Peace. Led by founders Dagmar Wilson and future congresswoman Bella Abzug, 50,000 women and mothers organized from across the nation, and 15,000 of these women gathered in Washington, D.C. in 1961 to protest and meet with legislators. Among these women were Hutner’s mother and two of her close friends: Resnick and Thalia Stern.
The efforts of Women Strike for Peace proved successful. Two years after the rally, the Partial Nuclear Ban Treaty was signed by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, banning atmospheric bomb testing.
When Hutner heard this story almost 50 years later, her jaw dropped. “It was as if the whole restaurant went quiet,” she said during her talk. “All I could see was my mother, her friends, these women, and what they had done. And I could not believe it.”
Hearing the story of her mother made Hutner become obsessed with nuclear history and how most of it, she says, had been repressed in the name of progress. Some of this is detailed in Radioactive, which she considers her most influential work.
“Radiation is dangerous, but all you will hear is that it is not,” Hutner said. “You do not go to the cigarette industry to ask if [a cigarette] is good for you or not. Of course, they are going to say that there is nothing harmful, and it is the same thing with nuclear power.”
Hutner’s research also revealed a startling trend. Many opponents to nuclear radiation — and radiation in general — were women concerned with the health of their families. Yet male scientists and politicians saw their fears as irrational.
“Women who were worried about radiation exposure were accused of being [‘radiophobic’] — hysterical, neurotic, or having anxiety,” Hutner said. “And what that does is make fear of radiation seem like, ‘Oh, it’s just female anxiety. It’s not real.’”
Hutner has since felt “compelled to be a voice” to those silenced by the nuclear industry and protect communities from the potential dangers of nuclear radiation. After the Fukushima nuclear incident in 2011, she interviewed Japanese mothers concerned with the country’s decision to burn radioactive rubble in all of its prefectures. She also wrote about the secret Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility, where clouds of plutonium were blown into unsuspecting towns in Colorado during its 40 years of operation. The communities are riddled with cancers.
However, despite having no previous experience in filmmaking, Hutner saw cinema as a powerful medium that could make the Three Mile Island meltdown, for example, “more real and immediate” to an audience while also shining a light on a forgotten community.
“No one came to help [Three Mile Island residents],” she said. “They had to deal with the aftermath. I felt compelled to support the underdog and give them a voice.”
Radioactive premiered at the Dances With Films independent film festival in December 2022 in New York City, where it won Audience Pick for Best Documentary. The film received rave reviews and went on to win more awards, including Best Director, Best Documentary and Best Investigative Documentary.
Hutner has also seen how her film and other writings have impacted her students.
“My students tell me that I am the only professor who has taught them anything about nuclear energy other than saying it’s good for climate change,” she said. “Their minds are blown… and, of course, that has ripple effects, because they will talk to [others].”
Hutner’s next film, Atomic Fire, will focus on how uranium mining and nuclear weapons development disproportionately affects the health of Native Americans. She is also completing an essay collection on nuclear disasters and another book with Folkers that analyzes nuclear history and technology through a feminist lens.
Additionally, she will be attending the United Nations’ meeting that will discuss the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a delegate in early March.
Have thoughts on nuclear? Join the conversation during the Collaborative for the Earth’s next academic debate on the role of nuclear energy in fighting climate change during The New York Climate Exchange’s first Climate Solutions Summit NYC from April 23-24.
— Rachel Lea
Add comment