Let There Be Light Blu-ray Movie - Inspirational Drama Film for Family Movie Night & Home Entertainment

This documentary was clearly not intended to entertain, but to give a somewhat accurate picture of the current state of fusion reactor research. It is hard to understand what audience the documentary makers were trying to address. It is not sufficiently entertaining or informative for political leaders or the general public. It supplies a somewhat satisfactory historical perspective, with respect to the past efforts in this area: Namely a combination of extreme naivete plus totally fraudulent "salesmanship". Who is that expected to appeal to? It portrays the current physicists, engineers and administrators as both incompetent and naive, which isn't really great. Who will be impressed by that? In addition, the film is excessively dry, without any depth, so it really does not appeal even to a fairly knowledgeable, but low-level, physicist, such as myself. I frankly don't know how a viewer can get past all these roadblocks (unless the viewer, as I am, is in some especially tolerant category: Like the "true-believers", or, as I am, a bit of an information-hound who is willing to suffer through really dry stuff). But I will give you my perspective, derived from the excellent information (poorly presented) in the documentary, plus my own perspective (which I think is pretty irrelevant, but a reader of my review probably wants to know "where I am coming from".)Here is the main message of the movie: Nuclear fusion provides the clearest option for driving technology and progress beyond the current use of fossil fuels and alternative technologies (solar, wind, etc.). In part, the authorities interviewed in the film claim it is the clearest option today because it has numerous seeming potential advantages, which we must carefully weigh in terms of our current prejudices, and what can actually emerge, as research in this area progresses. The underlying historical presentation depicts the practical challenges as daunting, plus the documentary tries to show that scaling up to something that is meaningful for actual energy production entails very heavy upfront costs, enormous complexity (far beyond the achievement of the U.S. in the 1960s with the drive to send astronauts to the Moon), and the full complexity is hard for any of us to fathom (and, as the movie clearly indicates in the case of project ITER, it naturally tends toward the development of large, inefficient, heavily hierarchical organizations and bureaucracies).The documentary hints at, but does not focus well on the central practical problems. Overall, to get fusion to operate at the surface of the Earth, we must get temperatures up to about 100-150 million degrees or so (that's kelvin, but it doesn't matter much). The movie drives that particular point home. It does not elaborate much on what I see as the fundamental roadblock in scientific progress (but perhaps not technical innovation), which is understanding the problem of turbulence and plasma instabilities. The movie mentions plasmas a bit. I think it does not make it clear that (in my opinion) there is a fair modern understanding, going back to the seminal work of physicists like Lev Landau. (In fact, the only real historically important physicists it mentions like Hans Bethe or Sakharov, are discussed way too superficially to even appreciate. Furthermore, it makes no mention of Landau.)The main, rather bleak conclusion, that comes through in the movie is the following: It is likely that without some serious scientific, engineering and theoretical advance in this field, that we must regard current efforts to develop nuclear fusion reactors as relatively premature and probably laughably primitive (but that is hard to judge, as we cannot see what the future holds). My opinion, (which is just to show my bias, here) is that it will take at least 100 years, possibly longer, to achieve the kind of meaningful breakthroughs that are needed. The principal physicists and engineers who are interviewed in the documentary, basically make this point as well, but it gets very watered-down in the documentary.There is a strong point the movie makes: A desperation program, such as the atomic bomb project or radar research or cryptography, of the Allies in WWII, where there are huge motivations involved, and top, top talent can be fairly well identified, and brought together in the highly organized, secretive military framework of WWII, might lead to success within a relatively short span of say, 15 or 20 years. The movie exposes an extreme complacency about fusion research, even in the research projects themselves. In the documentary, it is purported that there is little or no level of awareness of the magnitude or importance of such a project among political leaders or the general public. The scientists, the politicians, the engineers, and the admin types interviewed in the documentary indicate that this level of awareness and dedication is totally inadequate for making significant progress.We get the feeling from the documentary that currently a lot of money is just being poured down the drain on these projects by the U.S. and countries in the EU, as well as other public and private supporters. The movie hints that countries like the U.S. that have abundant resources and talent have the potential for maintaining a technological civilization for several hundred years. According to some of the scientists and engineers interviewed, that looks to be the time frame (or longer) we are seeing unfold for construction of a practical fusion reactor technology as an alternative to fossil fuels. In the documentary, we see countries like China, Russia, the U.S., Korea, Japan, India, and the EU, uniting behind this effort to develop practical fusion reactors. The cost overruns, that high level of naivete (not to mention pure fraud), the bureaucratic inefficiencies, etc. that the documentary is exposing is leading to (as it is depicted, anyway) a rather discouraging, bleak prospect for much progress at the present time. It is suggested in the documentary that countries which are extremely well-positioned to take advantage of current energy technologies might be able to unify (as I have suggested above) and succeed within a fairly short span, but we also have to face the daunting challenges and the unknowns. Something not mentioned in the documentary, but which seems implicit is the possibility that some alternative energy resources may push the need for progress in this area to the indefinite future for a highly technologically advanced country or organization that can stay relatively isolated to an expected worldwide catastrophic population collapse (on an unknown time scale at present). That is a sad hope, but it may be what we are looking at. Live for today! This is the message in the song at the end of the documentary.I strongly recommend the documentary, as it presents an excellent perspective and some good information. It is, however, dry, superficial, scattered (in that it has no obvious audience for its "messages"), and not entertaining. You might have to explore and dig very deep into the topic of fusion reactors much more to appreciate the documentary. Overall, it reminds me a lot of grad school.