Into Eternity

If you want to be informed about the problems of nuclear energy in a clear, balanced and intelligent way, you've come to the right place.

This film really opened my eyes and my conscience to what I and all my other fellow human beings are doing with our planet and the serious problems we pass down to future generations.

I felt the style of the film passed to the topic: slow shots, for example showing just how long it takes to build this underground nuclear waste storage facility. And then this has to remain untouched for thousands of years! Great illustration and comparison to these unimaginable time scales. So, also a very appropriate title: Into Eternity.

This is a very necessary film for everyone living today. I hope many people watch it. It can make our world a better place.

A white and eerie endless tunnel blasted out of the rock leads us in to the sinister yet strangely lyrical world of nuclear waste storage. The frozen trees of Finland lead us along icy tracks to something which must be beautiful, but no, it is the wicked giant who lives below the earth. We must never ever disturb him. Michael Madsen has produced and presents this film for the future with great love and concern for his fellow humans and the planet. Striking a match from within the dark and deep tunnel, a permanent tomb for nuclear waste, his face partially lit by the diminishing flame, Madsen speaks like a prophet/poet as he addresses the future and explains the dangers of disturbing this alchemical product entombed beneath the rock. He interviews the Finnish and Swedish scientists of the Onkalo project whose job it is to lock this stuff away and their philosophical dilemma about its whereabouts. Should we leave a marker warning DANGER KEEP OUT or should the site be unmarked and forgotten in the hope that it will truly never be disturbed. In this case never means, 100,000 years. Filmed across a large shiny desk with harsh lighting these poor men look anguished and disturbed by their responsibilities, almost to the point of nervous collapse. The footage of clear icicle-like rods containing the waste being lowered into shafts and water pools is like watching a ballet performed by gigantic molecules operated by an invisible hand. Everyone should see this film. It is a disturbing testament to our brightly lit lives which we continue to take for granted at our and the planet's peril.

Director and presenter Michael Madsden (not the same person as the actor of that name) has made a documentary film which may well be unique. Everyone should see it, because it concerns the future of our species and our planet, and it is not a superficial film by any means. He has adopted a moody Alain Resnais-style approach to the subject of the storage of nuclear waste for a necessary 100,000 years. This is not a propaganda film against nuclear energy at all. No comment is made for or against nuclear energy. I cannot understand the bizarre, I might almost say mad, review by a Latvian who claimed that this film was hilarious. Normally I would never criticize a review by another person, but this is such an extreme instance that comment really is required. This film is so far from being hilarious that how anyone could think so is inconceivable to me, and I am forced to doubt the person's sanity. Perhaps the Latvian reviewer is one of those people who would laugh hysterically upon witnessing the end of the world. Madsden evokes a powerful atmosphere in this film, showing haunting shots of the underground Onkalo ('Hidden Place') site in Finland where nuclear waste will be stored. The most effective parts of the film however are the amazing interviews with the Finnish and Swedish scientists and technologists (all in English). They are most impressive and deeply thoughtful people. The things revealed in this film about this important subject are truly mind-boggling. The film has an elegiac feel about it, as if it were a message to some future species about who and what the extinct humans once were. The Finns should leave a copy of the film in their underground caverns, in case they are ever entered tens of thousands of years from now. We should also put DVDs of this film into satellites which we send into deep space, as a kind of sad testament to a failed species, in the hope that some other species might find them one day and figure out how to view them, and learn the pathetic lessons of our inability to think sufficiently deeply, which is the fatal flaw of our human kind. Meanwhile, this film should be shown in all schools all over the world with the utmost urgency, and screened on all serious television channels in every country. But of course none of this will happen. I write as someone who has tried so far unsuccessfully to introduce crucial new technology into the storage of nuclear waste. The monstrous complacency and stupidity which I have encountered forces me to face the possibility that our species may become extinct within 100 years. I say this with sad resignation.

Even if you have no interest in where energy comes from or in nuclear technology, this documentary is so beautifully filmed and produced that there is enjoyment in just watching it.

The core question posed by this documentary is: how do you warn countless future generations, for 100,000 years to stay away from the radioactive waste? The documentary maker asks questions of the people involved. Their responses are often chilling.

There is also some dark humor in it - the expressions on the faces of the nuclear power executives when asked what happens after hundreds or thousands of years have passed.

An extremely important documentary for this moment in history. Everyone should watch this.

The documentary 'Nuclear Eternity' poses some interesting questions about a fascinating project currently underway in Finland, to bury nuclear waste deep beneath the ground so that it can decay over 100,000 years. On one hand, this can be seen as admirably far-sighted; on the other hand, our normal inability to see further than 100,000 seconds, and the very fact that Finland alone will fill this massive repository within just one century, might seem to point to the stupidity of producing nuclear waste in the first place, and to the certainty that humanity is doomed not to survive for so long a period (for sure, the species might be 4 million years old, but civilisation dates back less than 10,000 years). The film shows us lots of pictures of nuclear facilities, and gives us thoughtful interviews with serious sounding (mostly Finnish) scientists; but ultimately, all they can do is ponder the same unanswerable questions as the rest of us. This isn't a great documentary; but it is both humbling and scary.