There are currently four reactors under construction in the U.S., and one new reactor—conceived in the 1970s and taking decades to complete—will open soon at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar power plant in Tennessee. But that will not be enough to replace all the reactors retiring for economic or age-related reasons, including the Oyster Creek station in New Jersey—the nation's oldest operating power reactor—which will cease fission in 2019. As a result, the amount of electricity produced by nuclear power plants in the U.S. continues to drop, replaced in many cases by burning natural gas, which results in more air pollution. Now, the nation's reactors produce only a little more than 60 percent of low-carbon electricity in the U.S., a percentage that looks set to dwindle.
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