The one place where Republicans and Democrats may be able to come together over climate change and lowering emissions is nuclear energy.

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold a hearing Thursday to discuss a bipartisan bill that supports the advancement of new nuclear reactors, while pointing out that nuclear power is a "zero air-emissions technology."

Nuclear energy proponents say any plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must include nuclear power in the mix, not just solar and wind as the Obama administration appears to favor in its Clean Power Plan.

It may be a meager meeting of the minds, but the bill provides "a sense of congress that nuclear fission and fusion represent an opportunity for high energy density, zero air-emissions technology development of national importance to scientific progress, national security, energy R&D, and space exploration."

There appears to be a lot of room for agreement in that list, which is probably why it has the backing of both the committee's Republican chairman, Lamar Smith of Texas, and the top Democrat on the panel, Eddie Bernice Johnson, also from Texas.

Johnson, Smith and Energy Subcommittee Chairman Randy Weber, another Texan, along with 18 co-sponsors, introduced the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act before President Obama visited Paris to start negotiations on a global climate change deal.

The bill seeks to join the federal government with private companies to develop advanced nuclear power reactors by using the Energy Department's world-class fleet of research labs.

"The Department of Energy's (DOE's) national laboratory complex originated from the Manhattan Project [that developed the Atom Bomb during World War II] and since then has provided the facilities and expertise necessary to conduct research and development for military and civilian applications of nuclear energy," the committee said.

The bill directs the Energy Department to prioritize research facilities to help enable the private sector to "invest in advanced reactor technologies in the United States," the committee said. The measure also wants to tap the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's expertise.

The committee says public-private coordination is necessary because the U.S. "regulatory process for commercial nuclear R&D has not kept pace with technological development." That lag is partly because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is funded by fees by its licensees, which are all one type of reactor. That limits the agency's ability to review licenses and building permits for more advanced reactor designs.

If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not, or cannot, approve a reactor's license, it does not get built. The Obama administration has tried to fix the issue through a program to help certify small modular reactor power plants. But that process has been slow. It will be years before a license for one of the novel reactors is moved through the commission.

But the small reactors the administration is evaluating are limited to light-water reactors, which the regulatory commission is most familiar with. The science committee bill wants to push designs that go beyond those to include power plants cooled by liquid metals that tend to be safer, along with even more advanced concepts such as fusion reactors.

The bill also authorizes the Energy Department to enable the private sector to construct and operate privately funded reactor prototypes at agency facilities, while requiring the agency to develop a 10-year plan for nuclear R&D programs.