March 15, 2011 07:16 PM UTC

Uh, Please Turn Off CNN While I Explain...

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• by: Colorado Pols

You’ve got to have some sympathy for a guy who has to sell a nuclear power plant to a local community glued to the news from Japan–as the Pueblo Chieftain’s Loretta Sword reports:

A nuclear power expert who’s involved with trying to build a plant east of Pueblo said Monday that chances are nil that Japan’s scenario could play out anywhere in this country.

Don Gillispie, CEO of Alternative Energy Holdings Inc., in Idaho, said federal regulations require American plants to have multiple backup power and reactor-cooling systems that would have prevented the Japanese crisis. He spoke by phone Monday, hours before the third explosion in four days at a nearly out-of-control reactor in Japan.

Gillispie said he once managed a Massachusetts plant that was nearly identical to Japan’s imperiled plant, which has no secondary backup power or cooling system. It was built 40 years ago using a design that’s 50 years old. Older plants in the United States have been retrofitted with multiple backup systems, he said…

“I’d say the chances of an earthquake followed by a tsunami in Colorado are pretty small,” Gillispie said, referring to the local proposal. [Pols emphasis]

As a solution to ever-growing energy needs, nuclear power has both attractions and enormous pitfalls–one of the worst of which is now unfolding in northern Japan. There are no nuclear power plants in Colorado today, but obviously Mr. Gillispie would like to change that. And it’s true that any new nuclear power plant would incorporate generations of safety improvements over the antiquated Fukushima I design; advocates say the current objections to building newer and safer nuclear plants make accidents more likely, not less.

It’s just a really tough sell, you know, right now.