Our current yearly rate of raw energy consumption in the US is 100 quadrillion BTUs. That’s quads, for short, but it’s a lot of zeros. We use about 30% of those quads to power transportation, about 30% to produce heat, and about 40% of that energy to generate electricity. In general, we use oil for transportation, natural gas for heat, and coal, uranium, natural gas, and moving water (hydroelectricity) to generate electricity — that’s in descending order of usage.

Electricity has met almost all of the growth in our energy demand since the 1980’s. And that trend just becomes stronger. Consider: The fastest growth sectors of our economy are information technology (IT) and telecommunications. Transportation is more and more dependent on electricity; we’re moving towards hybrid gasoline-electric cars. Even heat sources are more likely to use electricity, for example, much of the function of gas ovens has been replaced by microwaves.

It’s not at all surprising that demand will double by 2020. But how we meet that demand will require some very hard thinking and tough decisions. Over the past 30 years, we’ve met demand mainly through growth of nuclear and natural gas generating capacity. No new nuclear plants have been ordered since the 1970s or completed since the 1990s. Currently, expansion of electric generation is through coal and natural gas fueled facilities, and through installing more efficient systems in today’s nuclear plants. The contributions of different fuel types to today’s electric generation can be seen in the graph to the (right).

There are significant barriers to meeting the coming demand, however. Our current reliance on foreign oil, the lack of progress in renewable capacity, the dramatically increasing costs of natural gas, and continued concern over pollution from coal have all curtailed development. In fact, of the 43,000 MW of new capacity that was planned for construction between 1995 and 1999, only about 18,000 was actually built.

The situation is critical, if we are to maintain America’s current quality of life and independence. For a healthy economy, personal comfort, national security, and because the environment matters we must consider new sources of power, including nuclear power in its advanced technologies — which promise greater safely, lower cost energy production, and domestic fuel sources.