PBS Earth Focus
We were honored to be featured by PBS Southern California’s Earth Focus series!
For our Mothers for Nuclear segment, we spent a whole day with the producers before even starting filming. We discussed the whole context of Diablo Canyon, how we changed our minds about nuclear, and the complex overlap and competing priorities of all the groups with a special interest in the lands and future of the station, including companies, governmental entities, conservation groups, nonprofits, and tribes. We spent time exploring beaches and other filming locations, and even took them out to High Street Deli in Los Osos where Heather got into a crazy discussion with some other nuclear supporters who definitely and defiantly were “NOT tree huggers!”.
When it came time to film a few weeks later, we hosted a group of women for a nuclear dinner where we explored their hesitations and skepticisms about nuclear. This was a big part of the process for how we each changed our minds, and we feel like part of our role as Mothers for Nuclear is listening with empathy before just trying to explain away someone’s concerns with facts about nuclear technology or radiation.
Our nuclear dinner with other moms and friends from our community, many of whom are skeptical of nuclear, just like we used to be.
We also spent hours filming our individual interviews in multiple locations. Kristin got a couple good zingers into the final version.
Clip of Kristin Zaitz from Earth Focus - we should keep existing nuclear plants open!
Filming at the Halfway Station - there was too much traffic outside.
Filming inside at the Halfway Station
PBS Earth Focus film crew
AND - we also spent hours filming with our kids, hiking, swinging, exploring beaches, appreciating nature.
We’re so glad to be doing this together.
Swinging with Kate and Sasha in the oak forests overlooking Los Osos and Morro Bay, scenery similar to that around Diablo Canyon Power Plant.
Another clip from the video - Kate and Sasha both on the tire!
You can watch Episode 5, “Diablo Canyon, California’s Last Nuclear Plant” on Youtube. We object to the title. Diablo Canyon is certainly California’s ONLY operational commercial nuclear power plant at this time (we have two research reactors at UC Davis and UC Irvine), but there will undoubtably be more nuclear in California’s future.
The overall show is at:
https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/earth-focus
There was also a mini segment on ytt Northern Chumash.
We had thought the story was going to give context to the importance of nuclear energy, from the perspective of moms who took a long time to change their minds but saw the dire need for more clean energy in our home state of California.
But we found that the final product left much of our story untold. This story wasn’t about us, but rather land back for the local tribe. There were selective clips of our comments saying that yes, we could do it all for our community, including land back while also continuing to run Diablo Canyon. It felt like a strategic effort to shift our message.
Instead, PBS sent a preview with an image claiming that Diablo Canyon was actually an oil refinery?!? We were horrified and worried that they were deliberately trying to get us fired. Turns out that certain publicists on their team simply didn’t know what Diablo Canyon looked like and had pulled some stock images related to energy in California.
Our message is clear in our minds - nuclear is vital to our future, and it needs different voices speaking up to promote and defend it.
Diablo Canyon makes 10% of California’s electricity, and our state needs more nuclear if we hope to more fully reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Nuclear is absolutely our best hope, and we have no ulterior motives in our advocacy for this amazing solution - we do it for our future and for our children.