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President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama pose with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy during a welcoming ceremony as they arrive at the prefecture of Caen on June 6. Photo credit: Getty Images.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, said Saturday that the U.S. should embrace nuclear technology.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, made a strong push Saturday for investment in a power source commonly used in France: nuclear energy.

“Now the debate in Congress is shifting to the size of your electric and gasoline bills and to climate change," the Tennessee Republican said in the weekly GOP address Saturday. "So guess who has one of the lowest electric rates in Western Europe and the second lowest carbon emissions in the entire European Union. It’s France."

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Nuclear plants provide 80 percent of France's electricity, according to Alexander, who added that the country even sells "electricity to Germany, whose politicians built windmills and solar panels and promised not to build nuclear plants."

“So you’d think that if Democrats want to talk about energy and climate change and clean air, they’d put American-made nuclear power front and center. ... We say find more American energy and use less ... and one place to start is with 100 more nuclear plants," he said.

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