Center for American Progress, Japan and the Future of US Nuclear Power

By Joseph Romm, Richard W. Caperton

This map depicts the locations of USnuclear power facilities in gray, and locations of seismic activity in yellow.

The loss of coolant, explosions and apparent partial meltdown of nuclear plants in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami remind us that nuclear power is inherently risky. The US government and the nuclear industry must take new actions to ensure that nuclear power is safe for the American public. In the immediate future, the government must do four things:

1. Review the ability of every reactor to deal with threats to its safety.
2. Congress must not cut funding for NOAA’s tsunami warning service.
3. The permitting process must not be further weakened.
4. The Department of Energy must continue to run the nuclear loan guarantee program to protect taxpayers and must continue to accurately charge the nuclear industry for the risk it incurs by guaranteeing these projects.

Read more here.

Seismic Activity and US Nuclear Facilities

This map illustrates just how vulnerable we could be: many of the United States’s 104 nuclear facilities are located near areas of seismic activity. We need to make sure that we are taking steps to secure our aging nuclear infrastructure against earthquakes and other environmental disasters and that the risks of potential accidents are fairly bone not just by tax payers, but by those who profit from producing nuclear power. Read more and view the map here.

Joseph Romm edits the blog ClimateProgress.org for the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Richard Caperton is a CAPAF policy analyst. Romm, who has a Ph.D. in physics, was acting assistant secretary of energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy during the Clinton administration.