GEC PRESSROOM NUCLEAR

Wind|Solar|Nuclear|Hydro-Electric

Nuclear Facts

• The world is changing rapidly--and public opinion needs to change along with it. Coming to grips with the reality of a carbon-constrained world means coming to grips with nuclear energy as one of our most important energy resources.
• There are 441 Nuclear Plants operating globally and they avoid 3 billion tones of CO2 emissions annually- equivalent to the exhaust from more than 428 million cars.
• France gets 80% of its power from Nuclear facilities.

The United States

• The last reactor to come online was the Watts Bar reactor in Tennessee, in May 1996.
• There are now 32 proposals to build generators in various stages of planning, according to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• A New Nuclear facility will cost at least $4 billion and take at least 10 years to build 20% of the energy produced in the US is nuclear
• In October, NRG, an electric company in Princeton, N.J., made the first application in three decades for permission to build a nuclear power plant
• 50 years after the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania became the
  first commercial power plant to go online, the New Jersey-based utility NRG filed papers seeking permission to build a nuclear power plant in Texas. This represents the first such new application since 1979.
• The nation's 104 commercial nuclear-generating units have been quietly humming along without significant incident for twenty-eight years.
• Through the first half of this year, nuclear raectors provided 19.8 percent of U.S. electricity generation, about the same proportion as they did in 1990.
• As a co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore used to call nuclear energy "synonymous with nuclear holocaust." But he now believes "nuclear is the cleanest, safest and has the smallest footprint" of any major energy alternative source.
• Another megatrend is working in nuclear's favor: demographics. In 2006, an estimated 41.3 percent of the population was under 30. Which is to say that the percentage and number of Americans who remember the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl decline with every passing year.
  

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