Televised explosions at nuclear plants in Japan are quickly deflating the concept of a "nuclear renaissance" in the United States. But some close observers say the earthquake points to the durability, rather than the fragility, of nuclear power plants.

After all, the reactor that experienced a blast over the weekend is a 40-year-old nuclear plant that was hit with a quake much bigger than anything recorded in California. And what actually failed were the batteries and diesel generators.

"The problem here is not a structural problem with containment," said Kevin Book, an energy analyst with ClearView Energy Partners in Washington. "What really failed here was the seawall."

Jack Spencer, a research fellow who studies nuclear energy for the conservative Heritage Foundation, stresses that the releases so far have contained relatively low levels of radiation that likely will have no biological or environmental impact.

"The inherent robustness of these nuclear plants is keeping the radiation inside of the containment vessels," said Spencer, who worked on commercial, civilian and military components of nuclear energy at Babcock & Wilcox Co. between stints at Heritage. "This has done nothing to show we should not be building nuclear power plants."

Experts say their argument isn't that nuclear power is completely safe, but that fears about nuclear power are distorted when compared to other sources.

"If you had 26 workers killed at a nuclear plant, the nation would be up in arms," said Frank Settle, an analytical chemist who teaches classes on nuclear energy and nuclear weapons at Washington and Lee University. "If you have 26 coal miners killed, the attitude is, 'Well, that's the cost of doing business.'"

Settle said he expects the results in Japan to be worse than the 1979 events at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, a partial meltdown that frightened the nation and crystallized the anti-nuclear movement, but resulted in minimal public exposure to radiation. He added, however, "it's no Chernobyl."

The failures at the plants, Settle said, show the difficulty in planning for any calamity, even on an earthquake-prone island.

"They designed for an earthquake," Settle said. "They didn't design for a tsunami. It's impossible to predict everything that's going to happen to you."

The Japanese disaster hit as nuclear power had started to emerge from a policy deep freeze cast in the 1970s and '80s by the Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union, Three Mile Island and the movie "The China Syndrome," a Hollywood film that depicted a scenario similar to the Pennsylvania meltdown.

The support of a Democrat like President Obama for nuclear power, joined with the long-standing philosophical backing from Republicans, had led to hopes by some nuclear advocates that public opposition to nuclear plant construction might be diminishing.

But the nuclear industry has required more than an absence of opposition. Given the expense of plants, utilities generally have indicated they need government support in the form of loan guarantees and insurance. That became tougher with the newfound frugality of the tea party-inspired lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

A recent poll showed that a majority of Americans see nuclear subsidies as a good place to cut government spending (E&E Daily, March 4). Book said those political undercurrents mean nuclear power probably won't have its renaissance anytime in the near future.

"We're shooting a dead bird on its way down," Book said.