Japan crisis renews US debate over nuclear power

But Richard Brodsky, a former long-time New York legislator and lawyer who has done battle with Indian Point on a range of issues, argued in an interview Tuesday that the NRC has been no tougher a regulator than the Securities and Exchange Commission and other federal agencies that allowed the financial meltdown of 2008 to happen.

"We had a meltdown there. That was the phrase that was used -- a financial meltdown," Brodsky said. At the Fukushima reactors in Japan, "We are facing a literal meltdown today."