felt in this country, and a lot of people concerned about whether they re safe or not. there are 104 nuclear reactors operating in the united states providing roughly 20% of this nation s electricity. president obama now calls for the nuclear regulatory commission to review the safety of all nuclear facilities. when we see a crisis like the one in japan, we have a responsibility to learn from this event and to draw from those lessons to insure the safety and security of our people. that s why i ve asked the nuclear regulatory commission to do a comprehensive review i of the safety of our domestic nuclear plants in light of the natural disaster that unfolded in this japan. jon: joining us now is michael wallace, vice chairman and chief operating officer of constellation energy. what s your take on that announcement from the president, this commission to review nuclear operations? well, we welcome very much the opportunity for the nuclear regulatory commission to oversee the levels o
historically you look back at, for instance, the federal response to hurricane katrina and so forth, there are a lot of people who think that the worst case scenario might not necessarily be prepared for. you re saying that it is? jon, it s not just my opinion. importantly, we have the nuclear regulatory commission which is a totally independent agency of the federal government with 4,000 employees, they are the gold standard for the world in regulation of nuclear safety. that s their exclusive focus. and they are the ones who have been for years and are even as the president requested once genre reviewing the preparedness of our plants to deal with these sorts of extraordinary events. and it s the confidence the public can take because the nuclear regulatory commission is, is coming and has been at a very strong view that our plants are safe, and our plants are prepared in a way to deal we
right. so we did have to have international law. we have that. the u.n. security council resolution is the force of international law to stop the killing of the civilians. now it s a matter of using that weight to leverage ghadafi out of office. maybe through elections or some other such means. jon: the former supreme nato allied commander, general wesley clark. thanks. thank you. jenna: the information out of libya is changing by the minute, and we re waiting to hear from the president a little over two hours from now. secretary of state clinton saying ghadafi has left the world no choice but to threaten military action against him. what s the reaction in libya? we have a live report from the capitol just ahead.
this is an unprecedented accident. we have four major reactors suffering damage. we ve never seen anything like this before. we are in uncharted territory. now we have to take a fresh look at this older technology. i think the viewers may be wondering, so is nuclear power unsafe? i wouldn t say so. i think the newer reactors that are coming online, the so-called generation 3 reactors have a lot of safety features, i won t say they are inherently safe. they have improved safety features compared to the 40-year-old reactors we see right now in japan. jenna: very interesting. charles thank you so much for your expertise today. charles ferguson. we look forward to talking to you again, thank you. you re well come. jon: fox news alert more trouble in yemen to tell you about. yemen s president has declared a state of emergency there as the government intensifies a crackdown on protesters who are commanding the ouster of the
there. i don t think that the president needs to go to congress, i don t think he will go to congress. jon: but, well, obviously, you want congress onboard if you can get it. i think he s got most of congress onboard, and i think there are some people who would oppose almost anything president obama does. jon: so the criticism that this president has been dithering while libya burns, you think that s a bunch of hot air? is. well, yeah, but i think he had to weight. you had to get the raich league in place arab league in place, that took some time. this is exactly what he did in egypt. he got criticized in the beginning for not doing enough. in fact, we were talking with the egyptian army and were involved, i believe, in the decision not to fire on the protesters, and we were talking with the egyptian army, and they told mubarak it was time for him to go. jon: our chatters have some pretty strong opinions, jim says we ought to stay out of libya. it s their own civil war. how do yo