Published in Infrastructure, Volume 62, Number 4, Summer 2023. © 2023 American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.
Nuclear energy has long been a significant source of reliable, clean energy within the United States. In 2021 alone, nuclear energy accounted for approximately 20 percent of electricity generated in the country and 50 percent of its carbon-free electricity. And while some sources of carbon-free generation are necessarily intermittent, nuclear generation has a high-capacity factor, capable of running at all hours of the day.