WASHINGTON, May 23 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by the Nuclear Energy Institute:

A comparison of the advances made in the nuclear energy industry since Jimmy Carter's visit to the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pa., on April 1, 1979. Carter was the last sitting U.S. president to visit a nuclear power plant prior to President George W. Bush's visit to Constellation Energy's Calvert Cliffs nuclear power station in Lusby, Md., on June 22, 2005.

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The following Table represents these three groups, with the data in this sequence: Nuclear Energy Performance Measures: in 1979, Today

Number of commercial reactors: 69, 103

Electricity production (kilowatt-hours): 255 billion, 782 billion

Electricity production (percent of U.S. supplies): 11 percent, 20 percent

Average capacity factor: 56.3 percent, 90 percent

Unplanned reactor shutdown (median per 7,000 reactor hours): 7.3, 0

Industrial safety accident rate (per 200,000 hours worked): 2.1, 0.25

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SOURCE: Source: Nuclear Energy Institute

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