To Use a Mountain

In 1982, US President Ronald Reagan proudly announced a plan to store all of the country’s high-level radioactive waste in a single location for 10,000 years. This was to provide the ultimate solution to the most urgent problem around nuclear power and atomic weapons. Government documents from the time reveal extensive geological analyses of the six candidate sites across the country. But the lives and histories of the people living in these areas were never considered.

The plan laid out by the government plays a key role in the structure and pacing of this film. Its impassive logic provides a stark contrast to the realities of the diverse communities who resisted the plan. In the past they had already experienced land dispossession, slavery, nuclear testing, resource extraction, and pollution from industry and mining. No wonder they distrusted the government plans.

Data visualizations, combined with archival footage that is as aesthetically striking as it is alarming, frame powerful interviews with residents whose stories convey how deeply their lives are connected with the land.