"This joint declaration will signal our shared commitment to the future of civil nuclear power, setting out a shared long term vision of safe, secure, sustainable and affordable energy, that supports growth and helps to deliver our emission reductions targets.”

Statement from the office of UK  Prime Minister, David Cameron, after the signing with French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, on 17 February 2012, of a landmark nuclear new build deal.

"This is a historic day. Today's licensing action sounds a clarion call to the world that the United States recognizes the importance of expanding nuclear energy as a key component of a low-carbon energy future that is central to job creation, diversity of electricity supply and energy security." Marvin S. Fertel, the Nuclear Energy Institute's (NEI) President and CEO.

"A second set of priorities that I see for myself and this government is a further reduction of dependence on a single source. First of all, this involves putting forward three bills during the spring session, namely: the LNG law, the Visaginas Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) law, and amendments to the Law on Heating Sector... talks on the Visaginas NPP (VAE) and debates on the required laws will be one of the key tasks during the parliamentary spring session." Dalia Grybauskaite, Lithuanian President, on 12 January 2012 (source: BNS)

“If we do not have an international legally binding agreement soon, and if it doesn’t give a boost to a major investment wave of clean energy technologies by 2017, the door to 2 degrees will be closed forever. A shift away from nuclear power would definitely be bad news for energy security, for climate change and also for the economics of the electricity price.” ,” Fatih Birol, Chief Economist, International Energy Agency on 9 November (Source: Bloomberg)

 “There will be, in the short term, a slowdown in some countries. But others like France, India or China (won’t see) an impact on their (nuclear) programmes. You can see that a lot of the large emerging economies are looking seriously at already expanding their use of nuclear energy. For example, China and India are expanding by five to eight times their use of nuclear energy by 2020 or 2022. Brazil is expanding its nuclear power programme. South Africa is looking seriously to do so. All these large emerging countries, with large populations and development challenges, have to rely on nuclear energy. They have no other option. Some of them don't even have fossil fuel like China; even then they would face huge climate-change issues.” Mohamed ElBaradei, former International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General on 24 October (source: Wall Street Journal)