Thank you, Chairman Shays, Ranking Member Kucinich and other members of this committee.

My name is Marvin Fertel and I am senior vice president and chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute. NEI represents over 270 members, including every U.S. utility that owns a nuclear power plant.

I have over 30 years experience working in the electric power and nuclear energy industries. I have visited and am familiar with nearly every commercial nuclear power plant site in this country. Given the importance of security at our nuclear power plants, I generally speak with every nuclear plant’s chief nuclear officer weekly and am getting to know many of their top security managers. During the past three years, the nuclear energy industry has carried out unprecedented and unequalled efforts to review and improve our security.

I would like to start by making clear the importance of nuclear power to our nation. Our nation’s 103 reactors safely and cleanly produce enough electricity to power one in every five homes and businesses in the United States. Many regions are heavily dependent on nuclear energy. For example, about 50 percent of Connecticut’s electricity comes from nuclear energy, and these plants provide an additional benefit of stabilizing the electricity grid.

Notably, nuclear power is the only large-scale source of electricity that is both emission-free and readily expandable. By replacing fossil fuels that produce electricity, nuclear power plants prevent the emission of levels of carbon dioxide equivalent to that from 90 percent of all passenger cars in our country. In addition, the use of nuclear energy reduces our dependence on foreign sources of oil and natural gas.