[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 11564-11565]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      WHY IS NUCLEAR NOT INCLUDED?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Stearns) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, presently the majority is developing their 
own energy legislation through the Energy and Commerce Committee. I 
serve on the Subcommittee on Energy. We have had several hearings and 
many, many witnesses, including Vice President Gore. This legislation 
is entitled the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. But, my 
colleagues, it imposes a massive national energy tax on every single 
American, especially those who are low income and elderly individuals.
  Now, if reducing carbon dioxide, creating jobs and promoting domestic 
energy sources were truly their objective, then nuclear energy should 
be a central component, you would think, of this legislation. But it is 
not.
  Nuclear power already provides the United States with over 20 percent 
of its electricity, and 73 percent of its CO2-free 
electricity. When it comes to affordable, near-term reductions of 
CO2 and other atmospheric emissions, the importance of 
nuclear energy cannot be overstated.
  Like wind and solar energy, nuclear energy is emission free, which 
means CO2 free. However, unlike wind and solar, nuclear 
energy can provide vast amounts of power on a constant basis. Wind and 
solar certainly have a role to play in America's energy mix, but in 
order to obtain clean, CO2-free energy, it seems that such a 
major piece of legislation should address the regulatory and policy 
issues that obstruct new nuclear energy power from being developed in 
the United States.
  But what makes nuclear energy potentially transformational is its 
simple versatility. Today, the Nation primarily uses nuclear energy for 
electricity generation. Electric power production amounts for roughly 
40 percent of America's total energy production. Nuclear accounts for 
20 percent of electricity here in the United States. But clean, 
affordable nuclear power can also be used to produce energy for 
industrial applications, and even for transportation, which accounts 
for 21 percent and 29 percent of U.S. energy consumption, respectively.
  For example, some reactor types could be used in the chemical 
industry for plastics production and for refinery operations, all of 
which use vast amounts of carbon-based energy to produce heat which is 
necessary for their industrial activities. Nuclear energy could also be 
used to produce synthetic fuels that could run America's cars. While 
these technologies are not commercially viable today, they are the 
types of things that could be possible, if the Federal Government would 
develop a regulatory and policy structure that was more conducive to 
growth in the nuclear energy industry.
  Nuclear energy is also a jobs creator. According to The Nuclear 
Energy Institute, the nuclear industry has created

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more than 15,000 jobs in recent years, all without even beginning 
construction on a new nuclear power plant. These include jobs in the 
sciences, manufacturing and construction sectors that private investors 
have created as they prepare to meet future construction demand. Once 
construction begins, up to 2,000 workers will be required to build each 
new plant and approximately 600 will be needed to operate it.
  The energy bill being developed focuses too much on the process of 
energy production, rather than on the product itself. For example, it 
creates a renewable energy standard that mandates only certain types of 
limited energy production, such as wind and solar. This approach 
artificially eliminates energy sources, including those that have not 
even yet been invented.
  If CO2 reduction is truly the objective, then maximizing 
America's nuclear resources should be a top priority. In fact, as 
Secretary of Energy Chu testified at one of our hearings, nuclear 
energy should be part of this legislation. France uses nuclear energy 
to produce almost 80 percent of the electricity they have, and also 
they have developed methods to reprocess the waste. In fact, they have 
been so successful that almost all of the waste product has been 
reprocessed. Japan and Canada have also successfully developed nuclear 
energy.
  So, my colleagues, the priorities we need to establish require a 
major restructuring effort from Congress and the administration that 
emphasizes market-based reforms that ensure long-term regulatory 
stability and policy predictability. Most importantly, these reforms 
can be done without additional cost to the taxpayers.
  Without such an effort, the billions of dollars of private capital 
needed to expand America's nuclear capacity will simply not be 
invested. These private investments will ultimately be what is needed 
for the Nation to achieve real reductions in CO2 emissions 
and create a new, clean energy economy.

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