The Nuns, The Priests, and The Bombs
Directed by Helen Young
Runtime: 87 min

UPC: 602573752869
DVDCAT#: PRDVD4651
Prebook: 2/18/2020
Street: 3/17/2020
SRP: $24.95

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Genres: Documentary, Faith & Religion, Politics, Environment, Peace,
​Nuclear Weapons, Christianity

Synopsis: 
​Peace activists, including elderly Catholic nuns and priests,
challenge the security and legality of America's nuclear weapons
when they break into two top secret facilities: the “Fort Knox” of
uranium in Tennessee and a U.S. Navy Trident nuclear
submarine base near Seattle. The film follows the federal criminal
cases against the activists who are driven by their conviction that
nuclear weapons are immoral. They seek to “Turn Swords into
Plowshares”. The film also follows efforts at the United Nations to
negotiate the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
which entered into force in January 2021.

Long Synopsis:
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In July 2012 three intruders broke into the Y-12 National Nuclear Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, known as America’s “Fort Knox of Uranium”. Y-12 stores enough highly enriched uranium to make some 10,000 nuclear bombs. The break-in, described by The New York Times, as the most serious security breach in the history of the U.S. atomic complex, sent shock waves throughout the federal government, when it turned out the intruders were an 82-year-old Catholic nun and two fellow peace activists. The trio succeeded in penetrating the heart of America’s nuclear stockpile through the sheer power of their moral conviction and a pair of bolt cutters. Theirs was a Plowshares protest designed to raise public consciousness on the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons.

More than 25 years after the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons are, once again, at the center of world attention. Deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Russia; America’s departure from the Iran nuclear deal; the unresolved stand-off with North Korea; have all ratcheted up the tensions surrounding the world’s more than 13,000 nuclear weapons.

While recent world events have captured the public’s attention, for disarmament activists the struggle for abolition has never stopped.  This film profiles the people on the frontlines of this movement. Since 1980 activists in lay and religious life have undertaken dramatic Plowshares protests, risking long prison terms, and even death in an ongoing campaign to move the world away from the nuclear brink. Plowshares is derived from an injunction in the Bible, “They Shall Beat Their Swords into Plowshares”.


The break-in at Y-12 by Sister Megan Rice and two others was inspired by a Plowshares action at a U.S. naval base near Seattle less than three years earlier. The naval base houses the largest stockpile of active nuclear warheads in the country. Five activists, including a Catholic nun and two Jesuit priests, intruded onto the base reaching the nuclear warhead bunkers. The film follows the two federal criminal cases triggered by both incidents. It traces the activists’ legal efforts to justify their actions under international law.

The film also follows diplomatic efforts at the United Nations in 2015 to effect implementation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed by the U.S. and four other nuclear-armed states more than 45 years ago. The NPT signatories pledged to abolish their nuclear weapons, a promise that remains unfulfilled. Because of the lack of progress on the NPT, a majority of nations agreed to undertake negotiations on a new treaty that would ban nuclear weapons, thereby placing them in the same category as chemical and biological weapons which the civilized world has deemed too horrific to use. 

On July 7, 2017, the United Nations adopted the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The new treaty declares the “use or threat of use” of nuclear weapons illegal under international law. The treaty was adopted by a vote of 122 -1. However, the world’s nine nuclear-armed nations did not participate in the negotiations. 
In October 2020 the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was ratified by 50 nations and it entered into force in January 2021.

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Passion River Films 2020