If you were to name the top three problems now threatening the United States, the

country's dependence on foreign oil would be one of them, perhaps number one.

Our dependence on foreign oil not only negatively impacts our foreign policy, it threatens

our economic well-being. We are at the mercy of Arab and other nations where some teach their

children that the United States is a foreign devil, that we should perish, that American

support for an Israel that must be wiped off the face of the Earth is reason for doing us

wrong.

We are in a vicious cycle. We pay unfriendly nations ever higher amounts of money for their

oil so they can harbor or support terrorism that can kill Americans and American soldiers. But

there is an obvious solution to this problem.

The way out of this cesspool is to replace foreign oil with nuclear power.

There is no other non-oil opportunity that can begin to deliver what nuclear power can.

It is an obvious direction that has been blunted by fears that have been proven wrong not only in this country, but the world over. Currently, 20 percent of America's electricity and 69 percent of its carbon-free generation of electricity is from nuclear plants. France creates 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants. China starts a new nuclear reactor every three months, but the United States hasn't started construction on one for 30 years.

The 25 coal miners killed in West Virginia earlier this month provide a comparison to the

fear of nuclear reactors. Hundreds of miners have been killed in the United States, but not

one life has been lost because of a nuclear generator.

In the past 60 years, not one sailor has been lost on our fleet of nuclear submarines,

where confined proximity to nuclear reactors is the norm. If further comparison is needed,

what could be more dramatic than the oil spill on the Louisiana coast and how it may devastate parts of the country?

Our elected officials know of the problem of foreign oil, but have spent billions on ethanol,

wind turbines, solar power and other concepts instead of on nuclear energy.

Exploring other alternative energy sources is important, as are energy conservation

measures, but in the short term nuclear power holds greater promise as a significant energy source. Solar power accounts for less than 1 percent of our electricity, and its growth is nowhere close to solving the larger problem. Wind power generates less than 1.5 percent of our electricity, soaking up $30 billion in tax breaks and other subsidies ... a cost of $18.82 per megawatt hour, 25 times as much as the combined subsidies for all other forms of electricity. Coal's contribution to carbon emissions is staggering, and an Oak Ridge National Laboratory study estimated that public exposure to the low radioactivity of coal-plant ash emitted to the environment results in a dosage 100 times higher than that from nuclear plant operations.

Safety is a common concern, but in the history of American nuclear power there has been only one major incident, a meltdown more than 30 years ago at the Three Mile Island plant in eastern Pennsylvania. No one was killed in that incident, there were no medical consequences and technology has improved. Chernobyl was a real disaster, but reactors no longer are built that way.

Meanwhile, our economic and foreign policy exposures from dependence on foreign oil are real and present dangers, and a huge risk we can ill afford to keep taking.

Fortunately, President Obama not only has pointed to the benefits of nuclear energy, he now has put $54 billion for that effort in the federal budget ... enough to construct seven to 10 modern reactors. Unfortunately, the lead time to get a reactor on line is measured in years, not months.

There is work to be done, in funding and siting new "passively safe" fission reactors,

researching fusion reactors and resolving issues of when and where to safely store spent fuels that remain radiation risks for hundreds of years if processed and up to 10,000 years if untreated. Leaders in the Senate and House need to get to work now. The importance and urgency of this course should be clear to them.