Congress’ responsibility is simple: write, pass and ensure the faithful enactment of laws. When it comes to providing America with a clean energy future, Congress has fallen short of its responsibility.

In 1987, through the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Department of Energy was entrusted to build and operate a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel. Fast forward through the years of studying a variety of locations, and Congress decided on Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Three decades later, Congress has yet to uphold its promise to fully fund operation of this site. America is demanding clean energy alternatives, and it is impossible to provide a zero-carbon future without including nuclear energy. Nuclear power accounts for 55% of zero-emission, baseload electricity nationwide. The American nuclear industry is working to introduce new reactors that are safer, smaller and more affordable than ever. One issue yet remains: how to address spent nuclear fuel.

Correction: The statement "The fission process will always produce some amount of material that must be disposed of in a safe way for thousands of years" is incorrect.

Though its true some radioactive isotopes have half-lives of millions or even billions of years, those isotopes are the least radioactive (it's perfectly safe to hold a chunk of pure uranium-238, with a half-life of 5.4 billion years, in your bare hands).

Spent fuel removed from a nuclear reactor, after spending ~7 years in pools of water to cool off, must be stored safely for a maximum of five hundred years before its radioactivity approaches the level of natural background radiation.