We all live in the shadow of Fukushima. Together with Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl, the March 2011 disaster in Japan completes the holy trinity of modern nuclear horror. For the last five years, American anti-nuclear activists and nuclear industry officials alike have wondered: Can it happen here?

For many of those who make appearances in Indian Point, a new documentary about the nuclear power plant that looms 30 miles north of New York City, the answer is a terrified “yes.” There are differences, of course, between the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and the one operated by Entergy in Buchanan, near Peekskill. But Indian Point is also an aging power point that happens to sit on two tectonic faults, and a recurrent feature of nuclear plant meltdowns seems to be that nuclear officials are focused on learning lessons from the last disaster, rather than anticipating the next one.

As a film, Indian Point is surprisingly uneventful, a series of mostly paint-by-numbers interviews with various stakeholders. What holds the audience’s interest is that the stakes are undeniably high. Twenty million people live within 50 miles of Indian Point, and the plant’s emergency plan is based on only a 10-mile evacuation zone. Indian Point also sits on the Hudson River, from which it guzzles millions of gallons of water each day to cool the plant’s reactor. That water, heated to 110 degrees, is then dumped back into the river. An estimated 1.2 billion fish die each year after being smashed in the plant’s water filters. Any major incident—a meltdown, a radioactive leak, nuclear waste getting into the groundwater—would have devastating consequences for much of New York State and for a certain metropolis that abuts the Hudson.

These fears come through vividly enough in Indian Point, though the film lacks a real hero or stalking horse to carry it. There’s no righteous whistleblower here, no Karen Silkwood, but we do meet Roger Witherspoon, a wry, grizzled environmental reporter, and his wife, a determined anti-nuclear activist named Marilyn Elie. We follow a plant engineer through his daily duties, which he approaches with intelligence and solemnity. Concerned residents pop up at town meetings to lambast hapless Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) officials, who seem to be sent to events like these only to take the brunt of community complaints.

Interviews with Entergy officials, Indian Point engineers, and plant employees paint a fairly unbiased portrait of the plant’s operation, which, depending on whose estimates you trust, provides between 5 and 20 percent of the region’s energy needs. Indian Point’s staff demonstrates its expertise and devotion to keeping the reactor running smoothly, while senior company officials come across as more remote and unconcerned, blithely preaching the gospel of atomic progress.

