Nuclear War

A day after the State of the Union speech, where Bush called US addicted to foreign oil, and said the cure would be coal, switchgrass, and nuclear power, some of the papers are all aglow: Clean, safe, nuclear power.

Like a mantra: clean, safe, nuclear power.

Apparently if you repeat it enough it becomes true.

The Utah State Legislature: responded swiflty to the President's call for new nukes (energy that is)

The House amended [and passed] HB46, which would create a new state energy office focus on alternative energy technologies, to include a specific mention of nuclear energy research...

Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, said that Utah — with its uranium availability, power delivery infrastructure, and thousands of acres of state-owned land — has a "great potential" to become a nuclear power supplier for the entire West...

"Everyone thinks, at first, about Chernobyl," [Rep. Mike] Noel said..."But the new technology makes nuclear power safe and available."

yet - the lawmakers acknowlege that "safe" has little to do with the nuclear waste, the spent fuel rods are never "safe" and they never will be. Everyone knows that.

Currently, state officials are trying to stop the shipment of nuclear waste to the Skull Valley Indian Reservation by Private Fuel Storage [(safe, clean)], a consortium of nuclear power plants who need to dispose of spent nuclear rods...

"'This does not send a message to bring all of your spent nuclear rods to this state...'[Rep. Brad] Daw said. 'All I'm saying is that we should be studying the use of nuclear power in the state. . . .nuclear energy is clean and it is safe.'

Anyway.

The money for this new endevour comes from the Enormous energy bill that the Bush Administration passed last year. Some called it a give away to the Republicans BIG donors in Oil, Coal, and Nuclear Power.

Listen to a fine radio program on the MASSIVE ENERGY BILL or read about it:
Nuclear Giveaways in House Energy Bill - Public Citizen

Chicago Tribune"No nuclear plants have been licensed since 1978, but utility companies nationwide are considering building at least 10 new reactors":

Politicians, the public and utility executives largely lost interest in nuclear power after enduring huge cost overruns and difficulty running the [clean, safe] plants efficiently. The partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant and the catastrophe at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union seemed at the time to have buried nuclear energy.

So why the new interest now?

And what could this mean in other parts of the world? Like India?
"With less than four weeks to go before President George W. Bush arrives here, the focus is supposed to be on the prospect for Indo-US nuclear energy cooperation. Yet, there is little debate on India’s potential gains from the new Bush initiative, tentatively called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, that could engineer a revolution in the way the world thinks about atomic power."