CBS "Face the Nation" - Transcript

Interview

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BOB SCHIEFFER: Lucy Craft. And we want to say thanks to Lucy, to Bill Whitaker, to Harry Smith to Celia Hatton, all of our correspondents and there more on the way covering this story in Japan.

We want to go now to Atlanta. The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Joe Lieberman is there. Senator, obviously our hearts go out to the people in Japan but I guess we had better turn to the local news here. Does this pose any kind of a danger for the United States? I mean, if this radiation gets into the atmosphere, is there a danger of it drifting here?

SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN (I-Connecticut/Chairman, Homeland Security Committee): There--there is some risk but I'd say right now from what I know, Bob, that it's remote, but what-- what this horrific natural disaster in Japan has to do for all of us is to go back and look at our-- our preparedness for such a catastrophe here. This-- this was an enormous earthquake. I-- just to put this in context the Japanese earthquake hit 9.0 on the Richter scale. The great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was only 7.6. So you can see how hard it is to plan for something like that. I do want to assure Americans who are watching that after Hurricane Katrina and all the failures that we saw with FEMA, our committee investigated, we recommended, we passed a reform bill, FEMA now has ten regional offices that drill was state and local, officials for preparedness for any kind of natural disaster particularly the ones that are more likely in given areas. That the-- we have a hundred and four nuclear power plants in our country. Every year once a year FEMA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the power plants go through
emergency drilling, evacuation planning to see what they would do if-- if a disaster struck. But the-- the-- the reality is that we're watching something unfold. And we don't know where it's going with regard to the nuclear power plants in Japan right now. And I think it calls on us here in the U.S. naturally not to stop building nuclear power pant-- plants but to put the brakes on
right now until we understand the ramifications of what's happened in Japan. A final word of reassurance to the American people, since Three Mile Island, we upgraded safety standards for our nuclear power plants. And right now no plant can be built unless it can withstand the known
highest earthquake in that geographic area, plus some margin of safety.

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): So-- so--

SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN: So this is part of what we do we do.

BOB SCHIEFFER: What-- what-- what you're saying here is that we should have a moratorium now on building nuclear plants, that we should just kind of stop and kind of reassess?

SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN: Yeah. I've been-- I've been a big supporter of nuclear power because it's-- it's domestic. It's ours and it's clean. And-- but we've had a good safety record with nuclear power plants here in the United States. But-- but I think we've got to-- I don't-- I don't want to stop the building of nuclear power plants but I think we've got to kind of quietly put-
- quickly put the brakes on until we can absorb what-- what has happened in Japan as a result of the earthquake and the tsu-- tsunami and then see what-- what more, if anything, we can demand of-- of the new power plants that are coming online. We've got a hundred and four nuclear power plants in America now. I was informed this morning that about twenty-three of
them are built according to designs that are similar to the nuclear power plants in Japan that are-- that are now the focus of our concern.

BOB SCHIEFFER: And what about-- are we prepared for an earthquake like this. I mean, obviously, this is not something that is going to happen once a week. But--

SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN (overlapping): Yeah.

BOB SCHIEFFER: --what about our buildings in this country? Is it time to think about reassessing specifications for that?

SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN: It is. The Japanese has we've learned in the last few days because of the terrible earthquake around Kobe, back about fifteen years ago, have retrofitted old buildings, new buildings have high standards of withstanding earthquakes. In the West Coast, California, of course, we always think of-- of the area of our country most likely to be hit by earthquakes. New buildings have been equipped with earthquake-resistant systems. A lot of the old buildings have not been retrofitted. It's time, I think for states to look at their building codes and to see whether they want to take preventive action. The other thing I spoke this morning with Craig Fugate the director-- of administrator of FEMA. And, one of the things he
said that he worries about is that the individual American people are not ready for what to do. The government is ready, about as ready as we can be, but what to do in the case of a disaster. And go to the FEMA website, because if-- if you live particularly near the coast you-- you got to have an evacuation plan. You got to have emergency supplies.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Yeah.

SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN: So-- so you'll be safe to-- to respond to a disaster.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well senator, thank you so much for joining us. When we come back in a minute, we're going to talk to David Sanger of the New York Times and our own David Martin, our national security correspondent in just a minute.

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