Summary and Introduction By the end of the next decade, demand for electricity in the United States is expected to increase by about 20 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). That projected increase—coupled with concerns about the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions on the environment—has encouraged policymakers to reassess the role that nuclear power might play both in expanding the capacity to generate electricity and in limiting the amount of greenhouse gases produced by the combustion of fossil fuels. Because nuclear power uses an abundant fuel source to generate electricity without emitting such gases, prospects that new nuclear power plants will be planned and financed in the next decade are greater than at any time since the 1970s, when cost overruns and concerns about public safety halted investment in such facilities. This reappraisal of nuclear power is motivated in large part by the expectation that market-based approaches to limit greenhouse-gas emissions could be put in place in the near future. Several options currently being considered by the Congress—including “cap-and-trade” programs— would impose a price on emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas.1 If implemented, such limits would encourage the use of nuclear technology by increasing the cost of generating electricity with conventional fossil-fuel technologies. The prospect that such legislation will be enacted is probably already reducing investment in conventional coal-fired power plants. Current energy policy, especially as established and expanded under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct), provides incentives for building additional capacity to generate electricity using innovative fossil-fuel technologies and an advanced generation of nuclear reactor designs that are intended to decrease costs and improve safety.2 Among the provisions of EPAct that specifically…

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