“I’ve been a big supporter of nuclear power because it’s domestic, it’s ours and it’s clean,” Lieberman said in an interview with “Face the Nation.”

“We’ve had a good safety record with nuclear power plants here in the United States … I don’t want to stop the building of nuclear power plants, but I think we’ve got to kind of quietly, quickly put the brakes on until we can absorb what has happened in Japan.”

Lieberman noted that only a portion of American nuclear power plants are built “according to designs” that would allow them to withstand major disasters.