I want to compliment you, and your predecessor, too, for continuing to be an advocate for the importance of nuclear power as a part of our energy future.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I know that we've got a company coming into Tennessee, and with plans to build these massive turbines that are twice as tall as our football stadium, destroy the landscape.

we should get some insurance in this country against climate change, and I think the best insurance in the near term is nuclear power.

We will discuss the recent Task Force Report on the Future of Nuclear Power from the Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board.

Today we'll discuss the recent Task Force Report on the Future of Nuclear Power.

Don't you see a real disconnect in the public discussion between those who see the urgency of climate change but who don't see nuclear as an important part of the solution?

I think nuclear power must overcome its own significant shortcomings--one, astronomical upfront costs; and, two, waste that is toxic for thousands of years--if nuclear is to be a significant solution to our climate challenges.

We need to maintain our existing nuclear fleet.

Imagine a day when the United States is without nuclear power. That's a day I don't want to see in our country's future.

What would replace it?

We need to set big, ambitious goals.

Now Congress should take the next steps, and pass the bipartisan Nuclear Waste Administration Act.

You support the idea that we should move on several tracks at the same time.

Unless you do something like the 25-year $11.6 billion program to create advanced reactors, we won't have the option.

Senator Feinstein and I don't agree on everything about nuclear power, but we agree on this priority.

If 20 of the leading science agencies in the industrialized countries of the world have said it's a threat and that humans are helping to cause it--if 20 fire marshals of that repute came to my house and said, 'Your house is likely to…

I think we need to identify the bottlenecks, we need to be ready to really roll up our sleeves across a lot of different sectors.

Well, Senator Feinstein and I are going to figure out how to pass that bill.

There has never been a death in connection with the commercial operation of nuclear reactors in the United States since they began.

My own view is that we ought to open Yucca Mountain, because the science and the law say we should do it.

I think the confluence of the low-carbon future, the importance of that, specifically in the power sector, and the fact that so many new tools and technologies are available to apply in this space that haven't been applied for a long time…

One of the difficulties is that nuclear power doesn't get credit for being carbon-free at a time when many people think carbon-free electricity is important.

We have significant bipartisan support in the Senate for moving on several tracks at the same time and with the hope that sometime that one or more of those will get there first.

It's a commonsense answer that you don't shut down your noncarbon-emitting energy source to replace it by carbon-emitting energy sources.