Workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant are losing control of the leaks. Radiation is so intense, workers can't even get close.

All along, we’ve been told nuclear power was safe, often by so-called experts who couldn’t even pronounce the word correctly.

“Sure, we’re prepared for earthquakes,” they said. “Nuke-u-lar power is safe, clean and efficient.”

In the United States, they’re still saying so. All is well, let’s expand nuclear power in the US.

Even President Obama has yet to come out and say we ought to put the brakes on any expansion.  US Energy Secretary Stephen Chu told members of Congress yesterday that the administration hasn’t changed its plans.

And Duke Power is talking about building a new plant in Gaffney, SC.

Except for the video footage and the run on potassium iodide, you’d never know anything bad was going on, at least not on a policy level.

Nothing like that could happen here.

Nothing like that was supposed to happen in Japan, either.

This disaster in Japan is the worst since World War II, and could spike even more to be the worst nuclear disaster in history.

Here in the US, we’re not in danger of radiation from halfway across the planet, but we do have a nuclear plant sitting right on a fault line in the middle of one of the most populous regions of the country.

This is the view of Indian Point I saw from the western shore of the Hudson River about 30 miles north of Manhattan.

The Indian Point Power Plant sits on a fault line at the edge of the Hudson River in Westchester County, 30 miles north of Manhattan. I used to live across the river from it, about 5 miles away. We were supposed to hear sirens during emergency drills, but they rarely worked. If the plant were about to explode, we would not have known.

New York’s fault line isn’t terribly active, but there is the occasional low-level quake, and Indian Point is not safe, no matter what industry officials say. I don’t recall whether any of them live within the danger zone.

But New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants the plant closed, and he’s right.

We all watch with increasing dread as events unfold in Japan, but we’re not safe from nuclear disaster here, either.