Soderbergh could have pumped up the horror, turning the material into a "World of the Living Dead," with disintegrating near-zombies lurching everywhere, but doing the story straight makes it scarier than any amount of trashily morbid movie spectacle.
He said the Mitchell team was claiming attorney-client and attorney work-product privileges, and the committee was arguing that turning the material over would violate the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches.
They were down there on their sewing machines, stitching a seam on burlap, then moving the fabric ninety degrees, another seam, turning the material again to run a third seam.
Lynas said that it would address the "principal cause of the community anxiety" — what to do with the radioactive byproducts from the plant — by turning the material into "processed co-products" for use mainly in manufacturing, like materials for roads and buildings.
The filmmakers were determined to preserve Fosse's vision while turning the material into a movie: "The challenge was, O.K., we're going to stay true to that theatrical metaphor, and we're going to put all the numbers on a vaudeville stage," Mr. Condon said.
At the Nuclear Control Institute, a nonprofit group based here that seeks to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons materials, Tom Clements, an expert on plutonium, said that turning the material into reactor fuel would put plutonium into the commercial world, a security risk.
