DVD Review: Indian Point
Dispatch from the Anti-Nuke Movement: Documentary on Indian Point after Fukushima
by Lyn Jensen
Link to distributor's webpage: http://www.firstrunfeatures.com/indianpoint.html
Following the 2011 Fukushima disaster, when three nuclear cores melted down at the same time in Japan, the anti-nuclear movement has moved back into the spotlight. A Fukushima-sized disaster at the Indian Point nuclear plant along the Hudson would require New York City be evacuated--possibly forever. Ivy Meeropol's 2015 documentary (running time 94 min.) balances footage of plant workers, scientists studying the plant's effect on fish and the Hudson (where nuclear wastewater is dumped), hearings to close down the plant, and what happened at Fukushima. There's no resolution, as long as the plant stays open, but that's the point.
Indian Point takes an unblinking look at the debate over nuclear power by going inside the long-running controversy over the aging nuclear plant just 35 miles from New York City. Could a meltdown like what happened at Fukushima--something nuclear experts previously insisted was impossible--happen here?
As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) decides whether to re-license Indian Point to operate for another twenty years, Meeropol looks at both sides--the plant's owners and operators who insist all is well, against community change agents campaigning for a shutdown. The latter includes black environmental journalist Roger Witherspoon and his white wife, former schoolteacher Marilyn Elie, leader of the anti-nuclear group IPSEC. Witherspoon and Elie travel in separate cars and sit separately at nuclear hearings, to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest.
In the middle are the federal and state regulators. While the NRC drags its feet on whether or not to re-license the plant, the state of New York has denied it a permit on the basis of nuclear waste contaminating the Hudson River. It may be the water pollution, not the dangers of nuclear accidents, that eventually succeed in getting the plant offline.
by Lyn Jensen
Link to distributor's webpage: http://www.firstrunfeatures.com/indianpoint.html
Following the 2011 Fukushima disaster, when three nuclear cores melted down at the same time in Japan, the anti-nuclear movement has moved back into the spotlight. A Fukushima-sized disaster at the Indian Point nuclear plant along the Hudson would require New York City be evacuated--possibly forever. Ivy Meeropol's 2015 documentary (running time 94 min.) balances footage of plant workers, scientists studying the plant's effect on fish and the Hudson (where nuclear wastewater is dumped), hearings to close down the plant, and what happened at Fukushima. There's no resolution, as long as the plant stays open, but that's the point.
Indian Point takes an unblinking look at the debate over nuclear power by going inside the long-running controversy over the aging nuclear plant just 35 miles from New York City. Could a meltdown like what happened at Fukushima--something nuclear experts previously insisted was impossible--happen here?
As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) decides whether to re-license Indian Point to operate for another twenty years, Meeropol looks at both sides--the plant's owners and operators who insist all is well, against community change agents campaigning for a shutdown. The latter includes black environmental journalist Roger Witherspoon and his white wife, former schoolteacher Marilyn Elie, leader of the anti-nuclear group IPSEC. Witherspoon and Elie travel in separate cars and sit separately at nuclear hearings, to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest.
In the middle are the federal and state regulators. While the NRC drags its feet on whether or not to re-license the plant, the state of New York has denied it a permit on the basis of nuclear waste contaminating the Hudson River. It may be the water pollution, not the dangers of nuclear accidents, that eventually succeed in getting the plant offline.
posted by Lyn Jensen | 1:21 PM
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