Casey Carter Releases 90-Minute Nuclear Waste Film as US Still Lacks Repository for 90,000 Tons
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Aug 25
Casey Carter Releases 90-Minute Nuclear Waste Film as US Still Lacks Repository for 90,000 Tons
2 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Aug 25
Summary
To Use a Mountain is now out in the US, with Casey Carter’s 90-minute documentary framing America’s unresolved nuclear waste problem through communities targeted for long-term disposal sites.
The film centers on the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which set off a search for a permanent home for more than 90,000 tons of high-level waste meant to stay isolated for 10,000 years.
Yucca Mountain in Nevada was ultimately chosen, but decades of legal fights, activism and political resistance halted the project, leaving the US without a permanent repository while the government pays utilities tens of billions to store spent fuel.
Carter uses Department of Energy records, archival footage and interviews to argue the siting process treated rural, often Indigenous and minority communities as disposable; the film highlights Western Shoshone objections and contamination at Hanford.
The documentary arrives as Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah were named finalists for federal nuclear waste campuses, with the Energy Department planning to pick three host states by year-end.