The current energy legislative environment fails to promote real infrastructure investment, which is critically needed, as we have seen in the electrical system failures of the past several years.

The previous incarnation of the current energy bill, which failed in the last Congress, had loan guarantees to speed the construction of the next generation of nuclear plants. Without new power plants, we will have inadequate power supplies and be forced to keep old, polluting coal-burning plants limping along for decades more and also be dependent on high-cost gas-fired plants.

There are no incentives in the current economic structure of our electrical system for building transmission facilities, yet these are critically needed. No utility makes money selling transmission; they sell electricity. Without both real reform supporting electrical transmission and a new spurt of construction of major emission-free power plants, we will have neither the power and environment we need, nor a means for reliably delivering it.

JAMES S. TULENKO

Director

Laboratory for Development of Advanced Nuclear Fuels and Materials

University of Florida

Gainesville

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The current energy bill is a disappointing, pale shadow of the original Senate bill, which, though full of pork, did have important infrastructure provisions that failed to be preserved. This economy is driven by electricity, and the two biggest sources are coal and nuclear power. Decades of subsidies, grants and other giveaways have not made alternative energy sources very attractive, and even windmills cannot compete with coal or nuclear power. We need to wake up to that fact and move to support the next generation of these major domestic sources.

While the current bill provides some help for "clean coal," it does little to promote new construction. Worse, the loan guarantees that were to jump-start the next generation of safe, more economical nuclear plants are gone. The United States cannot bet its future on the status quo or on future technologies that may or may not work. We need an energy bill that promotes a healthy economy, and this is not it.

SHELDON LANDSBERGER

Director

Nuclear Engineering Teaching Lab

University of Texas at Austin