Jay Inslee: “Well, actually, the bill, as I understand, will not be writing off nuclear energy. It has been difficult to grow largely…”

“Well, actually, the bill, as I understand, will not be writing off nuclear energy. It has been difficult to grow largely in cost. The utilities simply have not purchased it because of its cost even though it has been very heavily subsidized by the taxpayer to the tune of billions of dollars; it still has remained so expensive, the utilities have simply not ordered new plants. It was really not Jane Fonda that ended the growth of the industry; it was simply the cost and economics of it. And this bill does not eliminate that that will be on the floor in the next week. I want to address, I know, the gentleman from California, and a lot of these good ideas have come from California. Certainly Governor Schwarzenegger has been active in supporting this effort to move to more fuel-efficient standards, and many of them are in California. I want to address something electricity quick, and then I want to yield to Mr. Blumenauer if I can. The gentleman has pointed out that if you are going to have plug-in hybrids, then you have to have electricity to run the plug-in hybrids. But tonight we are going to have some discussion about the multiple systems of clean ways to generate electricity. I want to point to one of them, a company that I have learned about, a company called AUSRA Energy, and their name came up when we were debating the renewable electrical standard.”