Dark Circle (film)

Dark Circle
Directed by	Judy Irving Christopher Beaver Ruth Landy
Music by	Gary Remal
Production company	Independent Documentary Group
Release date	1982 (1982)
Running time	82 minutes

Dark Circle is a 1982 American documentary film directed and produced by Judy Irving, Christopher Beaver and Ruth Landy that focuses on the connections between the nuclear weapons and the nuclear power industries, with a strong emphasis on the individual human and protracted U.S. environmental costs involved. A clear point made by the film is that while only two bombs were dropped on Japan, many hundreds were exploded in the United States.

The film won the Grand Prize for documentary at the Sundance Film Festival and received a national Emmy Award for "Outstanding individual achievement in news and documentary."^[1]

For the opening scenes and about half of its length, the film focuses on the Rocky Flats Plant and its plutonium contamination of the area's environment. The remainder of the film covers the development, wartime usage and prolonged testing of U.S. nuclear weapons, including the creation of plutonium-239 in commercial nuclear power plants such as Diablo Canyon Power Plant. The documentary is unrated. World War II film footage of a Nagasaki bombing survivor whose back and left arm were stripped of skin is shown; scar-covered, he tells his story in the present day. Testing of nuclear weapons on live hogs at skin-searing distances, the Priscilla Test, and U.S. military troops at safer ranges are also featured.

The film closes by highlighting anti-nuclear protest activities directed at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant on the California coast in the USA. The protesters contend, and the movie supports, the assertion that the protests were responsible for delaying the licensing of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant and, as a result of the delay, the uncovering of serious construction errors was made public just before the plant went online and started producing power. Discovered by a 25-year-old engineer prior to initial criticality, earthquake supports for nuclear piping had been installed backwards. The film documents the protests with substantial up close footage including the moment that this information became known.