This is a hearing on the future of nuclear power generation in the United States.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is rebuilding Unit 1 of its nuclear power plant at Browns Ferry, Alabama, which has been closed since 1985. This will be the first new nuclear capacity in the United States since 1996 when TVA started operations at Watts Bar in Tennessee. There has been no new nuclear power plant built from scratch in the United States since 1974.

On the face of it, the failure of the United States to begin a new nuclear plant for 30 years is perplexing. After all, we invented the technology. Since the 1950’s, we have operated nuclear-powered submarines and carriers without a reactor incident - 72 nuclear-powered submarines and nine nuclear-powered air craft carriers operate today all over the world. On shore we operate 103 power plants which produce about 20 percent of America’s electricity.

At a time when we are importing nearly 70 percent of our oil and increasingly moving toward importing more of our natural gas, our failure to use more nuclear power makes us more dependent on the Middle East and other foreign sources of natural gas. At a time when the supply of natural gas is diminishing and the price is skyrocketing, new nuclear power plants - once built - could provide low cost electricity that would help keep production costs down and keep jobs from moving overseas. Once built, a nuclear power plant produces electricity at a cost of 1.71 cents per kilowatt hour compared with 1.85 cents from coal-fired plants and 4.06 cents for natural gas plants. Nuclear power plants are efficient and reliable; coal plants operate 69 percent to 70 percent of the time, while nuclear plants typically operate an average of 90 percent of the time. Finally, at a time when many parts of the United States are struggling to meet clean air standards, nuclear power plants could produce electricity without producing the millions of tons of sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides and carbon that coal-fire plants produce. In addition, nuclear power plants avoid emissions of mercury that coal-fired plants produce.