My title comes from the last line of a recent press release issued by Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry. The RSC noted that filming began on the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, 50 years ago. In the movie Bond kills the eponymous villain by forcing him into the cooling tank of a nuclear reactor. That scene and the movie's anniversary prompted the press release, which speculated on the negative impact of Bond on the public's perception of nuclear power.
Blaming Bond is a tough sell. Even taking into account the artistic license that moviemakers grant themselves to put entertainment above accuracy, Dr. No doesn't exaggerate the perils of nuclear power, nor does it downplay nuclear power's benefits.
Dr. No plans to disrupt Project Mercury, NASA's first manned space program, by interfering with the navigation system of its rocket launchers. To do so from his lair on the Caribbean island of Crab Key, he needs a powerful radio transmitter. Nuclear power—movie watchers are left to presume—gives him a means of generating electricity that doesn't require large, attention-attracting shipments of fossil fuel.
When Bond and his companion Honey Rider are captured and brought to Dr. No's lair (shown here), they are scrupulously checked for radiation and scrubbed until a henchman wielding a Geiger counter declares them clean.
Granted, Dr. No's nuclear reactor and its cooling tank are implausibly accessible. Nevertheless, to sabotage the reactor and prevent the transmitter from fatally diverting the Mercury mission, Bond had to disguise himself as a powerplant worker. Then, facing determined, physical opposition, he had to seize the reactor's controls.
Nuclear weapons, but not nuclear reactors, appear as plot elements in five of the 21 Bond movies that followed Dr No. In Goldfinger (1964), the eponymous villain plans to detonate a Chinese nuclear device inside the US gold depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky. His goal is not necessarily to destroy the gold, but to contaminate it, thereby raising the value of his own gold holdings.
Thunderball (1965) hinges on the theft of an RAF bomber and its two nuclear bombs, one of which the villain, Emilio Largo, threatens to detonate in Miami unless he receives a massive ransom. In The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), the megalomaniacal shipping magnate Karl Stromberg hijacks three nuclear-armed submarines, one British, one Soviet, and one American. By targeting their missiles at New York and Moscow, he aims to provoke a nuclear war that will destroy the superpowers and leave him free to lead and establish a new underwater civilization. Octopussy (1983) also involves a stolen nuclear weapon, as does The World Is Not Enough (1999).
However fanciful the plots of the five nuclear-armed Bond movies are, the recurrence of stolen weapons as a plot element reflects a real and widespread fear. We might be able to convince ourselves—barely—that an established nuclear power won't use its weapons unless severely provoked. Nuclear-armed terrorists are far scarier because they want to attack, kill, and destroy their perceived opponents.
Nuclear power is also scary, as the disaster last March at Fukushima Daiichi demonstrated. Saying yes or no to nuclear power entails acknowledging and examining our fears, not ignoring them.
