Filmmaker’s biases hobble legitimate look at the dangers of Indian Point
NOEL HOLSTON
Newsday
September 8, 2004

"Imagine a world without New York City," a political figure with a famous name says in "Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable," a documentary film about the Hudson River nuclear power plant. "The terrorists already have."

Care to guess who it is? George W. Bush? Rudy Giuliani? John Ashcroft? Some other Republican?

No, it's a Democrat: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chief attorney of Riverkeeper, a Hudson River Valley environmental group that has long opposed the Indian Point plant.

Executives of Entergy, the New Orleans-based corporation that owns Indian Point, declined to speak on camera to filmmaker Rory Kennedy. In a telephone conversation that Kennedy recorded, an Entergy spokesman is heard saying they're skeptical that they would be treated fairly, given that she is Robert's sister.

Give the filmmaker points for not attempting to hide the family connection. Give her more for including comments by scientists and regulators who say Indian Point isn't a threat that New Yorkers should be chewing their nails over. But take away a bunch of points for her making of a documentary with biases that not only undermine her legitimate questions about Indian Point's vulnerability, but also leave her open to ridicule. Why, for instance, include comments from political humorist Al Franken, the linchpin personality of the liberal Air America radio network? Franken's a bright, witty guy, but he's no nuclear scientist.

No one would argue that Indian Point doesn't merit serious, ongoing scrutiny. The attacks three years ago this week in New York and Washington made assaults on power plants, refineries and office buildings all-too-easily imaginable. And Indian Point has a history of problems. Just last Wednesday, its No. 2 generating plant had to be shut down because of problems with a water-flow valve.

There's no denying, either, that, given the 20 million people living within a 50-mile radius, Indian Point could be tempting to terrorists out to maximize deaths and economic disruption. And it's hardly a secret that there's been dispute in the surrounding counties over the adequacy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's evacuation plan.

Kennedy addresses each of these issues in "Imagining the Unimaginable," but nothing positive that any official says seems to dissuade her from her overarching premise, which is that Indian Point is a catastrophe waiting to happen to the Hudson Valley and even Manhattan.

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Gov. George Pataki and Sens. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer decline to talk to her about Indian Point, Kennedy gets quotes from the highest-ranking politician she can corral, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), a well-known nuclear-power critic.

When Edward McGaffigan of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission tells Kennedy, on camera, that the chances of terrorists hitting spent-fuel pools and causing a meltdown "are very small at every [nuclear] facility and ridiculously small at Indian Point," the next line of her narration is a dismissive change of subjects: "Regardless, it was not at all reassuring when we were able to fly over the plant unimpeded."

It is, in fact, startling that she and a helicopter pilot hovered near Indian Point for more than 25 minutes without any apparent challenge - more so when she notes that there's a "no fly" zone over Disneyland, but not this plant. It's a concern that Kennedy's documentary should force someone at Entergy or in government to address.

But when Kennedy shifts her focus to fears that have nothing to do with terrorism and brings into her film the specter of the 1986 power- plant disaster at Chernobyl, viewers may start to wonder what, short of bulldozers and a wrecking ball, would make her feel secure.

HBO is, in effect, joining Kennedy's advocacy by pairing "Indian Point" with "Chernobyl Heart" (at 8:45 p.m.), Maryann De Leo's Oscar-winning 2003 documentary about the lingering devastation from the Ukraine plant's massive radiation release - specifically, kids born with heart defects. It's a testimony to the film's honest poignancy that it is not diminished by association with a more baldly political film.

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