The Film's Mission

This film is meant to be a wakeup call for humanity, to help develop an understanding of the realities of the nuclear weapon, to explore ways of presenting the answers for “a way beyond” and to facilitate a dialogue moving towards resolution of this Gordian knot of nuclear weapons gripping the world.  The documentary’s characters are the narrative voices, interwoven with highly visual sequences of archival and contemporary footage and animation.  The story is a morality play, telling the struggle waged over the past six and half decades with the last act yet to be determined, of trying to find what is “the way beyond?”

Director's Statement

“In My Lifetime” takes on the complex realities of “the nuclear world”, and searches internationally for an answer to the question is there a Way Beyond?  This documentary is part wake up call, part challenge for people to engage with the issue of ridding the world of the most destructive weapon ever invented.

In February 2008, I began a journey to film and report on the story of the inner workings of the nuclear world.  There has been a re-emergence of the realization that a world with nuclear weapons, including a proliferation of fissile nuclear materials, is a very dangerous place.  Of course this realization has been known since the creation of the atomic bomb.  It continues to be a struggle which has not been resolved.

This is a very complex issue with many voices, speaking from many perspectives, representing the forces and entrenched institutions in the nuclear states, not to speak of the rest of the world’s nations some of them with nuclear power capable of producing their own fissile materials and now there is the danger of so called “non-state actors”, who want to get their hands on the nuclear fissile materials necessary to create nuclear weapons. Today the materials and technology to make nuclear weapons are more readily available than any government who possess them would like one to believe.

At this writing it there are new developments in this parallel nuclear world, with a new emergence of the debate as to what has to change and steps need to be taken to move away from nuclear weapons.  Since over the past year there definitely has been movement towards dealing with the reality, as a result this project has been able to record the changes taking place.

Following the screening, Robert Frye (the film's Director) will discuss the film with the audience.

For more information about the film, please visit the Nuclear World Project website. 

About the topic: Given the increased threat of nuclear terrorism by non-state actors, current global mechanisms addressing nuclear security have revealed serious limitations. As a result, after President Obama’s speech in 2009 at Prague, the first Nuclear Security Summit Meeting was successfully held in Washington D.C. Based on its success, the second Nuclear Security Summit Meeting is scheduled to be held in March 2012 in Seoul, Korea. In addition to the ongoing issues, the Seoul Meeting will deal with new issues such as nuclear safety in reflection of the recent Fukushima accident. The meeting may also take on other issues such as the framework agreement, further institutionalization of the Nuclear Security Summit Meeting and sustainable financing. Ultimately, this process should reinforce the effectiveness of global efforts to tackle nuclear terrorism and related issues.

About the Speaker: Professor Suh-Yong Chung is an international expert on international governance and institution building. His recent research interests include governance building in global climate change, Northeast Asian environmental cooperation institution building and nuclear security governance building. Dr. Chung has recently participated in various national and international conferences and seminars on nuclear security, such as the ROK-US Nuclear Security Experts Dialogue, and the WMD Study Group Meeting of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP).

Dr. Chung is the Associate Professor of Division of International Studies of Korea University, an Adjunct Professor of The Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the General Secretary of CSCAP Korea. Dr. Suh-Yong Chung holds degrees in law and international relations from Seoul National University, the London School of Economics and Stanford Law School.

While Chernobyl, and now Fukushima, are household words, far fewer people have heard of Maiak in the southern Urals and Hanford in eastern Washington State where Soviet and American engineers built plutonium plants to fuel the Cold War nuclear arsenal. Within nuclear "buffer zones," plant managers, who were pushed to produce as much plutonium as quickly as possible, polluted freely, liberally and disastrously. During the plutonium disasters that ensued, each plant issued over 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment, at least twice the amount released at Chernobyl. Under cover of nuclear security and powered by generous corporate welfare, plant managers employed influential public relations campaigns, restricted medical research, deployed temporary, migrant workers as ‘"jumpers" for the dirtiest work, and generally denied the existence and hazards of radioactive contamination. This was the house plutonium built. Kate Brown argues these histories are important because they supplied models, staff, blueprints and subsequent ready-made disasters for Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Kate Brown is an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is the author of a Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Harvard 2004), which won the American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize for the Best Book in International European History. Brown is a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow and is working on a book called Plutopolia, a tandem history of the world’s first plutonium cities, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2012.

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Special Japan Studies Program and CEAS Series: Winter-Spring 2011-12

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Japan's March 11 Disasters One Year Later

The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster that hit Japan in March 2011 had both immediate catastrophic consequences and long term repercussions. Fundamental areas of Japan’s environment, economy, society, and collective national psyche were deeply affected, giving rise to a broad range of urgent issues. These include economic debates about how to meet the country’s energy demands with nuclear power plants offline, and what path to take for the country’s energy future; political crises, including criticism of the government’s disaster response; the psychological challenges of coping with trauma and grief; a daunting environmental clean-up; and social developments, including a new wave of civil society activism. This series brings together scholars and activists from a wide range of specialties to take stock of how the Japanese have been affected by the disasters, and to assess the efforts of residents, volunteers, and policy makers to recover and move forward.

The triple disasters in Japan in March 2011 have created overwhelming trauma in the stricken areas for people of all ages. The mental health needs are immense, both immediate and long term, and ripple out into Japanese society. Members of the Nichibei Care Network, a group of mental health professionals in the Bay Area who organized to assist relief activities, will offer their reflections on the trauma suffered. They will also report on the heroic efforts that are taking place daily as people rebuild lives through compassion and caring.

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Special Japan Studies Program and CEAS Series: Winter-Spring 2011-12

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Japan's March 11 Disasters One Year Later

The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster that hit Japan in March 2011 had both immediate catastrophic consequences and long term repercussions. Fundamental areas of Japan’s environment, economy, society, and collective national psyche were deeply affected, giving rise to a broad range of urgent issues. These include economic debates about how to meet the country’s energy demands with nuclear power plants offline, and what path to take for the country’s energy future; political crises, including criticism of the government’s disaster response; the psychological challenges of coping with trauma and grief; a daunting environmental clean-up; and social developments, including a new wave of civil society activism. This series brings together scholars and activists from a wide range of specialties to take stock of how the Japanese have been affected by the disasters, and to assess the efforts of residents, volunteers, and policy makers to recover and move forward.

Since the triple tragedy of March 11, 2011, we have seen a number of changes in what we sometimes refer to as "civil society" in Japan. In particular, we have seen the emergence of new forms of social capital and social strategies generated through the disaster response, including: real time flows of information over digital networks; the mobilization of various non-governmental actors and agencies in the immediate relief effort; emergence of the "volunteer" as a new cultural citizen; different patterns of contact, cooperation, and competition among previously unrelated groups and individuals in the rebuilding effort; and dispersed political opposition movements that have generated the largest protests since the 1970's AMPO demonstrations. Based on David H. Slater's volunteer relief work and disaster-focused ethnographic research, this talk will begin to document the range, depth, and limitations of these changes in terms of their disaster relief efficacy, but mostly on their possible longer-term effect on the shifting shape of civil society in post 3/11 Japan.

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Special Japan Studies Program and CEAS Series: Winter-Spring 2011-12

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Japan's March 11 Disasters One Year Later

The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster that hit Japan in March 2011 had both immediate catastrophic consequences and long term repercussions. Fundamental areas of Japan’s environment, economy, society, and collective national psyche were deeply affected, giving rise to a broad range of urgent issues. These include economic debates about how to meet the country’s energy demands with nuclear power plants offline, and what path to take for the country’s energy future; political crises, including criticism of the government’s disaster response; the psychological challenges of coping with trauma and grief; a daunting environmental clean-up; and social developments, including a new wave of civil society activism. This series brings together scholars and activists from a wide range of specialties to take stock of how the Japanese have been affected by the disasters, and to assess the efforts of residents, volunteers, and policy makers to recover and move forward.

This SEMINAR has been CANCELLED.

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Special Japan Studies Program and CEAS Series: Winter-Spring 2011-12

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Japan's March 11 Disasters One Year Later

The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster that hit Japan in March 2011 had both immediate catastrophic consequences and long term repercussions. Fundamental areas of Japan’s environment, economy, society, and collective national psyche were deeply affected, giving rise to a broad range of urgent issues. These include economic debates about how to meet the country’s energy demands with nuclear power plants offline, and what path to take for the country’s energy future; political crises, including criticism of the government’s disaster response; the psychological challenges of coping with trauma and grief; a daunting environmental clean-up; and social developments, including a new wave of civil society activism. This series brings together scholars and activists from a wide range of specialties to take stock of how the Japanese have been affected by the disasters, and to assess the efforts of residents, volunteers, and policy makers to recover and move forward.