Mike Pence, John Shimkus, and Fred Upton write in today’s Wall Street Journal on the need to go nuclear. An excerpt:

Independent analyses by Charles River Associates Inc. and the National Association of Manufacturers predict the Waxman-Markey bill will cost millions of domestic jobs as manufacturers relocate plants to countries with less draconian environmental regulations. Meanwhile, the electricity rates under a cap-and-trade system would, as President Barack Obama said in January 2008 “necessarily skyrocket,” by some estimates up to $4,300 each year.
This is not the way to go. Instead, House Republicans this week unveiled legislation that will lead to lower prices, more jobs, a cleaner environment, and greater energy independence. The centerpiece of our American Energy Act is a commitment to increase the production of our abundant domestic natural resources, and not to punish traditional energy producers and consumers.
The cleanest way for utilities to control CO2 emissions is to increase the supply of carbon-free nuclear energy. This is obvious and simple, but in the thousand-page Waxman-Markey bill nuclear power is hardly mentioned.
The American Energy Act establishes a national goal of licensing 100 new nuclear reactors over the next 20 years. With 31 announced reactor applications already in the pipeline, this goal can be achieved — and it will revitalize an entire manufacturing sector, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. The bill also streamlines a cumbersome regulatory process by offering a two-year, fast-track approval program for power-plant applications that employ safe reactor designs already approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.