There has been a lot of well-placed concern about President Bush's new Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. The program raises serious proliferation concerns, would cost tens of billions of dollars, and would not resolve the need for a permananent nuclear waste solution. The Washington Post did a good job of running through some of these concerns in
yesterday's story.
But the story's lede had me bouncing off the walls.
President Bush's new nuclear energy initiative is supposed to help cure America's "addiction to oil" by redesigning a taboo technology, originally used to obtain plutonium for bombs, to reuse spent nuclear fuel.
Now would someone please explain to me exactly how nuclear power is supposed to reduce our "addiction to oil"? Have I missed the new breakthrough that would have us fueling up on uranium or plutonium?
Oil only accounts for 3% of our electricity, which--as of now--is the sole energy use for nuclear power.
So perhaps Bush's grand scheme to invest billions in nuclear power in an effort to reduce our dependence on oil is in fact targeted at displacing this miniscule three percent. Of course, the more likely explanation is that the Bush administration is trying to associate their personal ambition (and a notably unpopular one) of increasing nuclear power with the publicly valued goal of ending our dependence on oil.
But why do reporter's continue to propogate this blatant misdirection?
With the advent of the hydrogen economy, nuclear power could, in theory, play a role in reducing our dependence on oil. But this is never a part of the story. Instead, Bush--and many reporters--are content to connect two dots that are not on the same page.
Given what is at stake, we need to get better (and louder) at pointing this out.