No move yet in Congress to curb nuclear incentives

Worries about nuclear power plant safety reached Capitol Hill Wednesday as senators questioned the nation’s top nuclear regulator about whether his agency was doing enough to avert a  Fukushima-type disaster in the united States.

"I'm looking to you for more leadership than I've gotten," Senate Energy and Public Works Committee chairman Sen. Barbara Boxer told Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at a hearing of her committee.

She and her California colleague Sen. Dianne Feinstein are urging Jaczko to order an immediate inspection of the Diablo and San Onofre nuclear plants in their state.

"You're doing nothing new," Boxer complained to Jaczko. "I don't hear anything proactive. I worry about that."

Jaczko, a former aide to Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, responded that his agency will conduct “a systematic and methodical review” of the events at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan and apply lessons learned to the safety of nuclear plants in the United States.

Boxer was impatient with his approach: "What we're asking is not for some major breakthrough of any sort , but just can we take another look, and put some teeth behind it, and put a timetable behind it and do these immediate inspections and not just say, ‘Oh, we're waiting to learn from Japan?'"

Fears for Californians living near San Onofre
Noting that the Obama administration has advised Americans in Japan to stay outside a 50-mile radius of the Fukushima site, Boxer said there are seven million people living within a 50-mile radius of the San Onofre plant near San Clemente, Calif.