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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States should "put the brake on" newborn thermonuclear noesis plants until full discernment what happened to the earthquake-crippled thermonuclear reactors in Japan, the chair of the U.S. Senate's homeland section commission said on Sunday.

Engineers in Nihon proven on Sun to turn a overheating at threesome thermonuclear reactors mass Friday's Brobdingnagian seism by pumping in chilling water after polity said they assumed that whatever damage had already occurred.

"I don't poverty to stop the antiquity of thermonuclear noesis plants," independent Senator Joe Lieberman, chair of the senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said on the CBS information "Face the Nation."

"But I conceive we've got to category of quietly put, apace put the brake on until we crapper absorb what has happened in Nihon as a result of the seism and the wave and then wager what more, if anything, we crapper obligation of the newborn noesis plants that are reaching on line," Lieberman added.

Lieberman, an important vocalise in the U.S. Congress on husbandly section matters, described himself as a "big supporter of thermonuclear noesis because it's domestic, it's ours and it's clean." He also touted "a beatific country record" with thermonuclear noesis plants in the United States.

Nuclear noesis is disputable because of its radioactive waste, which is now stored on place at setup locations around the country. Remembering the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island thermonuclear noesis being in Pennsylvania, many Americans ease nurse concerns about thermonuclear power's safety.

U.S. President Barack Obama has argued that the United States staleness process its cater of thermonuclear noesis to foregather its forcefulness needs and fisticuffs status change. In February 2010, Obama announced $8.3 1000000000 in give guarantees to build the prototypal U.S. thermonuclear noesis being in nearly threesome decades.

The government championship module go to help Southern Co build two reactors at a being in the U.S. land of Georgia.

Expanding thermonuclear forcefulness is an area Obama, a Democrat, and Republicans have embraced as a artefact to generate noesis and jobs.

Supporters of thermonuclear noesis debate that more reactors module be necessary for the United States to face orbicular warming effectively because thermonuclear is a much cleaner forcefulness maker than coal-fired noesis plants, which spew edifice gases.

Lieberman noted there are 104 thermonuclear noesis plants in the United States, and that about 23 of them are shapely according to designs kindred to the thermonuclear noesis plants in Nihon that are now the pore of the world's concern.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is actively reviewing 12 compounded authorise applications from 11 companies and consortia for 20 thermonuclear noesis plants, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group.

"Since Three Mile Island, we upgraded country standards for our thermonuclear noesis plants, and correct now no being crapper be shapely unless it crapper resist the known highest seism in that TRUE area plus whatever margin of safety," Lieberman said.

Senate politico cheater Mitch McConnell, speech on "Fox News Sunday," urged a cautious approach.

"I don't conceive correct after a major environmental hardship is a very beatific time to be making American husbandly policy. I conceive we ought to meet concentrate on serving the Asian in whatever artefact that we can," McConnell said.

Democratic Senator physicist Schumer told NBC's "Meet the Press" the United States ease staleness liberated itself from dependence on external oil for its forcefulness needs. "I'm ease selection to countenance at nuclear. As I've always said, it has to be finished safely and carefully," Schumer said.

Friday's seism knocked discover the back-up chilling systems at stricken reactors in Fukushima prefecture northerly of Tokyo, causing a build-up of modify and pressure that belike damaged but had not yet destroyed whatever render rods.

(Reporting by Will Dunham; editing by Evangelist Whitesides)

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