On August 3, President Obama announced the release of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan final rule. The new regulations are part of the administration's push to position the United States as a world leader in addressing climate change going into the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, to be held November 30-December 11 in Paris. The full implementation of the rule, however, faces legal and political challenges in the United States that may take years to resolve. As with any complicated rulemaking, the reaction to the Clean Power Plan has been mixed. The lofty goal of the new rule is to improve the environment for future generations, thereby improving the quality of life. The debate about the economic cost of the regulations versus the societal benefit will continue for years and will likely never be resolved. The big economic loser from the implementation of the new EPA rule is the coal industry, along with the states whose economies are supported by it. The significance of the Clean Power Plan for the U.S. nuclear power industry, however, is unclear.
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