Filmmakers Examining the 'What Ifs' of Nuclear Power

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/08/arts/television/08lunc.html?th

 

September 8, 2004

Filmmakers Examining the 'What Ifs' of Nuclear Power

By NANCY RAMSEY

 

Cesium-137 is not your usual topic for a Midtown

Manhattan lunch. But if you sit down with Maryann De

Leo and Rory Kennedy, who have completed documentaries

on the effects on children of the Chernobyl nuclear

accident in 1986 (Ms. De Leo) and the Indian Point

power plant in Buchanan, N.Y. (Ms. Kennedy), it is not

long before the subject comes up. (Cesium-137 is

radioactive waste, an isotope produced when uranium or

plutonium undergoes fission.)

 

The women, who had not met before, quickly dispensed

with the social niceties. Ms. Kennedy complimented Ms.

De Leo on her film, which she said she found

heartbreaking, then took 15 seconds to show a photo of

her second daughter, born six weeks earlier. Ms. De

Leo invited Ms. Kennedy to a reception her brother

Dominic was organizing in honor of the films, which

will be broadcast back-to-back by HBO tomorrow night.

 

Ms. De Leo said she too had proposed films to HBO

about Indian Point and AIDS, a subject Ms. Kennedy

tackled with " Pandemic: Facing AIDS, " a five-part

series for HBO last year. But Ms. Kennedy, being a

Kennedy - she is Robert F. Kennedy's youngest

daughter, born after his death - was able to secure

outside funds more readily.

 

Menus in hand, the women quickly and nearly

simultaneously dismissed tuna as a possible choice:

" Mercury, " they said.

 

Ms. De Leo's film " Chernobyl Heart, " which won the

2003 Academy Award for best documentary short, is not

easy to talk about or watch. It takes the viewer into

children's hospitals in Belarus and Ukraine and into

the 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the reactor.

According to the United Nations, birth defects in

Belarus have increased 250 percent since the accident,

and the lives of the children in the film are tragic.

 

One girl, Julia, was born with her brain outside her

skull; another child, 4, is the size of a 4-month-old.

 

" I had to show enough of the kids with deformities,

but if I showed too many, nobody would want to watch, "

Ms. De Leo said.

 

Ms. Kennedy's " Indian Point: Imagining the

Unimaginable " takes a less emotional approach. It

features interviews with the plant's detractors

(including her brother Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chief

prosecutor for Riverkeeper, an environmental-

protection group) and a few defenders. Ms. Kennedy,

who narrates the film, begins with questions: what if

American Airlines Flight 11, navigating along the

Hudson valley on Sept. 11, had banked left and hit

Indian Point, rather than continuing south to the

World Trade Center? Is enough being done to protect

Americans from terrorists at home?

 

Both women offered a quick and categorical no when

asked if they considered their films anti-nuclear

power.

 

" I don't believe in making didactic films, " said Ms.

De Leo, born in Brooklyn, one of six children of a

sanitation worker. Her television documentary work has

taken her to Vietnam, El Salvador, Cuba, Afghanistan,

Angola, Korea and Iraq.

 

The idea for " Chernobyl Heart " was planted when a

friend visiting from Spain suggested that Ms. De Leo

see a United Nations photography exhibition about the

children of Chernobyl. " It was the most shocking thing

he'd ever seen, " she said. " I had really forgotten

about Chernobyl. I hadn't thought about birth defects

there, and at the time I was working on a film about

Bellevue, " the Manhattan hospital.

 

But in 2002 Ms. De Leo went to Belarus. She would

return two more times, at one point requiring

treatment for cesium poisoning herself.

 

" Indian Point has much more cesium than Chernobyl

had, " Ms. Kennedy interjected. " Being in New York City

on 9/11, and in the aftermath, there was a lot of

concern about where the next terrorist attack would be

- Indian Point, bridges and tunnels, waterways,

chemical plants. There was a disproportionate amount

of fear, some of it grounded, some not. I went into

this project with the question, is Indian Point

something we need to fear? "

 

Ms. De Leo asked her about Indian Point's safety

record ( " horrible, " Ms. Kennedy said); both agreed on

the impossibility of evacuating millions in the event

of an accident. Ms. Kennedy talked about the inability

of guards to protect the plant adequately because of

the stress and long hours detailed in the film.

Located on the Hudson, the " exterior is screaming 'hit

me,' " she said. " It's extremely vulnerable by water. "

 

In the film Mr. Kennedy contends that the pools of

water holding spent fuel rods, which contain more than

1,400 tons of spent nuclear fuel, are most vulnerable.

His claims are followed by an interview with a

scientist from the Union of Concerned Scientists, who

details a potential terrorist attack, beginning with

an explosive charge interfering with the rods'

coolants and ending with the release of cesium-137

into the air.

 

In the film such criticisms are countered by

representatives of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,

a federal agency, and the Nuclear Energy Institute, a

trade association, who describe the robust structures

housing the reactors, the stepped-up security after

9/11 and the extreme unlikelihood of an attack of the

magnitude Ms. Kennedy suggests.

 

Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast,

which owns the two plants at Indian Point, is not

interviewed in the film but defended the business in a

phone interview. " There has never been an event at

Indian Point causing dangerous releases of

radioactivity, " he said. " The plants are heavily

regulated by the N.R.C. " Since 9/11, he added, the

commission has limited the number of hours a guard is

allowed to work, and Entergy " has spent well over $30

million on enhancing security at Indian Point. "

 

Those outside the industry also propose nuclear energy

as a viable power source, given the environmental

hazards of burning fossil fuels and the political

ramifications of relying on Middle East oil. A recent

interdisciplinary study by the Massachusetts Institute

of Technology concluded that " the nuclear option

should be retained precisely because it is an

important carbon-free source of power. "

 

Spencer R. Weart, a historian at the American

Institute of Physics and author of " Nuclear Fear: A

History of Images " (Harvard University Press, 1988)

offers a context for examining the nuclear option -

and, perhaps, for watching these films.

 

" All industrial systems are liable to accidents, and

we have to ask ourselves, where is the most likely

damage over the long term? " he said in a telephone

interview. " Every energy source has its problems.

Bangladesh has been in the news because of the

terrible flooding there. This is what will happen

increasingly with global warming. The longtime

consequences of burning fossil fuels are more severe

than nuclear power. Let's say I'm less a proponent of

nuclear power than an opponent of coal and oil. "

 

Listening to such arguments, Ms. Kennedy nodded and

said, " I would have said that before I made this

film. "

 

Scientists also have strong views about the fairness

of comparing the Chernobyl disaster to what could

happen in this country " Chernobyl was a terrible

tragedy, " Robert A. Bari, a physicist at the

Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., said in

a phone conversation. " It happened because they

operated the reactor out of its specifications. And

Indian Point has a very, very different design than

the Chernobyl reactor. "

 

For Ms. Kennedy and Ms. De Leo, who are passionate

about their subjects, such arguments have little

resonance. Ms. De Leo recalled a warning a Russian

scientist made to Americans, imploring them to shut

down nuclear plants.

 

Ms. Kennedy said, " You can't throw numbers and

statistics at children born with brains outside their

heads. " Such debates would not be resolved at a

two-and-a-half-hour lunch. Running late for a 3 p.m.

meeting, she added, " I don't think there is another

side to the conversation. "

 

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company