Congress and the Obama administration should put construction of new power plants on hold while an independent commission reviews the lessons to be learned from the continuing Japanese disaster, according to a group that campaigns against new U.S. reactor projects.

Michele Boyd, director of the Safe Energy Program at Physicians for Social Responsibility, said a moratorium on new reactors and a block on $36 billion that President Obama has requested for new loan guarantees for nuclear power plants should be put in place immediately.

Meanwhile, a report modeled on one carried out by the Kemeny Commission to investigate the 1979 Three Mile Island accident should take stock of the public health and safety implications of the failures at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan, she said.

Physicians for Social Responsibility and other groups with membership in the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability are highlighting nine Energy Department projects that they say present the most significant risks for runaway federal spending along with environmental, public safety and nuclear proliferation hazards.

Among those are the Mixed Oxide Plutonium (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility under construction in Savannah River, Ga.; a waste treatment plant at the Hanford site in Washington; the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California; the Kansas City Plant, where most nuclear weapons components are made; and the Uranium Processing Facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Tom Clements, the southeastern nuclear campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth, said the MOX plant in Georgia is nine years behind schedule and projected to cost three times the amount originally budgeted, despite there being no existing domestic market for MOX fuel because full testing on it has yet to be carried out. "The MOX program has become an expensive project which enriches contractors," he said at a National Press Club briefing.

Tom Carpenter, executive director of a group called Hanford Challenge, said one element of the cost escalation associated with the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant is that DOE has missed deadlines under its legally binding cleanup agreements, resulting in fines and penalties.

He said an analysis found that hydrogen gas was likely to build up and catch fire or explode at the plant, leading to "small explosions" that DOE has said present an acceptable risk. But Carpenter and other critics believe that such explosions present a serious safety hazard that should be addressed through measures such as additional containment, if necessary.

In a waste treatment plant like the one under construction, Carpenter said, the reactions would take place inside a black box environment totally sealed from the outside, so personnel could not enter certain areas to address problems if an accident did occur.

Regarding the ongoing Japanese emergency, Clements, the Savannah River campaigner, said the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission was undermining its own credibility by continuing to move forward with reactor licensing activities as though the event posed no questions for U.S. operations.

Accusing the commission of pretending that the Fukushima disaster didn't happen, he and others said the regulators are inherently biased toward industry because their operations are funded by fees collected from those they oversee.