''Into Eternity'' is a 2010 Danish

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

directed by Michael Madsen, released in 2010. It follows the construction of the Onkalo waste repository at the

Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant The Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant ( fi, Olkiluodon ydinvoimalaitos, sv, Olkiluoto kärnkraftverk) is one of Finland's two nuclear power plants, the other being the two-unit VVER Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant. The plant is owned and operated by ...

on the island of Olkiluoto,

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bot ...

. Director Michael Madsen questions Onkalo's intended eternal existence, addressing an audience in the remote future. ''Into Eternity'' raises the question of the authorities' responsibility of ensuring compliance with relatively new safety criteria legislation and the principles at the core of

nuclear waste management Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, Rare-earth element, rare-earth mining, an ...

. When shown on the British

More4 More4 is a British free-to-air television channel, owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. The channel launched on 10 October 2005. Its programming mainly focuses on lifestyle and documentaries, as well as foreign dramas. Content When ...

digital television channel on 26 April 2011, the name ''Nuclear Eternity'' was used. It received a special mention in the Sheffield Green Award at

Sheffield Doc/Fest Sheffield DocFest (formerly styled Sheffield Doc/Fest), short for Sheffield International Documentary Festival (SIDF), is an international documentary festival and Marketplace held annually in Sheffield, England. The Festival includes film s ...

in 2010.

Background

''Into Eternity'' is a documentary about a

deep geological repository A deep geological repository is a way of storing hazardous or radioactive waste within a stable geologic environment (typically 200–1000 m deep). It entails a combination of waste form, waste package, engineered seals and geology that is suite ...

for

nuclear waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons ...

. The concept of long-term underground storage for radioactive waste has been explored since the 1950s. The inner part of the

Russian doll Matryoshka dolls ( ; rus, матрёшка, p=mɐˈtrʲɵʂkə, a=Ru-матрёшка.ogg), also known as stacking dolls, nesting dolls, Russian tea dolls, or Russian dolls, are a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside ano ...

-like storage canisters is to be composed of

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pink ...

. Hence in the case of Onkalo it is tightly linked to experiments on copper corrosion in running

groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and Pore space in soil, soil pore spaces and in the fractures of stratum, rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit ...

flow. Application for the implementation of

spent nuclear fuel Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor (usually at a nuclear power plant). It is no longer useful in sustaining a nuclear reaction in an ordinary thermal reactor and ...

repository was submitted by

Posiva Posiva Oy is a Finnish company with headquarters in the municipality of Eurajoki, Finland. It was founded in 1995 by Teollisuuden Voima (60% of stock) and Fortum (40% of stock), two Finnish nuclear plant operators, for researching and creating a ...

in 2001. The excavation itself started in 2004. With a total of four operable reactors providing 25% of the country's energy supply,

ranks 16th in the world nuclear power reactors country list topped by the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

(104 reactors) and

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

(58 reactors).

Synopsis

This film explores the question of preparing the site so that it is not disturbed for 100,000 years, even though no structure in human history has stayed standing for such a long period.

Reception

The film received overall positive reviews from Swedish film critics, with an average score of 3.6 of 5 according to Kritiker.se. Praise was given for the suggestive presentation of the daunting task of communicating the dangers of nuclear waste far into the future, as well as the great dangers of handling the by-products of nuclear energy. At the same time, the same presentation was criticized by ''

Dagens Nyheter ''Dagens Nyheter'' (, ), abbreviated ''DN'', is a daily newspaper in Sweden. It is published in Stockholm and aspires to full national and international coverage, and is widely considered Sweden's newspaper of record. History and profile ' ...

'' for "numbing" the viewer by being exaggerated or even over-simplified.

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

anthropologist

Vincent Ialenti Vincent Ialenti is an American anthropologist who studies the culture of nuclear energy and weapons waste organizations. He is the author of ''Deep Time Reckoning'', an anthropological exploration of how experts assessed the potential impact of ...

has described differences between Madsen's film's "aesthetics of desolation and bleakness, of forbidding machinery and industrial processes" and his own fieldwork experiences in Olkiluoto repository safety case experts' offices.Ialenti, Vincent. 2020. Deep Time Reckoning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

/ref> The film received the Green Screen Documentary Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA)

References

External links

*
Deep Time Reckoning
" (Vincent Ialenti) Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press (2020).
Page at the Dogwoof film distributor website

Nuclear Energy Act, 1987

BBC News - Finland buries its nuclear past, 27/04/2006
*

Dr. Helen Caldicott interview director of the film]

Review in

Washington City Paper The ''Washington City Paper'' is a U.S. alternative weekly newspaper serving the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The ''City Paper'' is distributed on Thursdays; its average circulation in 2006 was 85,588. The paper's editorial mix is focu ...

Review in

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

"Sebastian Musch: The Atomic Priesthood and Nuclear Waste Management - Religion, Sci-fi Literature and the End of our Civilization
{{DEFAULTSORT:Into Eternity Finnish documentary films Films shot in Finland Radioactive waste 2010 films Documentary films about environmental issues 2010 documentary films Nuclear technology in Finland Documentary films about nuclear technology Danish documentary films 2010s English-language films