Editorial: PR campaign, or snow job?

Monday, Aug. 22, 2005 | 9:01 a.m.

The energy bill signed by President Bush earlier this month has buoyed the pro-Yucca Mountain Nuclear Energy Institute. The Washington-based lobbying group for the nuclear power industry is ecstatic over the fact that the bill offers huge incentives for building new power plants. After 30 years of federal disinterest in adding any more problematic nuclear power plants to the more than 100 that already exist in the U.S., the NEI is reveling in the support from the Bush administration for renewed construction.

The NEI is so energized by the vision of increased nuclear power production that it is planning a national public relations campaign. A newsletter for the energy industry, Energy Daily, reported last week that the NEI plans to spend as much as $8 million on the campaign. Steve Kerekes, NEI's spokesman, would not confirm that amount. "It could be more, it could be less," he told Las Vegas Sun Washington reporter Benjamin Grove.

Kerekes said the campaign will focus on the potential that more nuclear power plants hold for meeting the nation's energy needs. Promoters of nuclear power have long focused singly on the power produced, and how clean it is. They are now talking about a "renaissance" in nuclear power, aided by the new energy bill and the nation's obviously increasing demands for power.

Something they haven't focused on, however, is nuclear waste. We can envision a PR campaign for nuclear power that promises a new day for America, just as nuclear power was advertised back in the 1950s, when promoters put forth the vision that power would be so cheap it wouldn't even need to be metered. Our fear was all but confirmed when Kerekes said it wasn't clear yet how much the campaign would focus on Yucca Mountain. This site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is where the federal government is proposing to dump 77,000 tons of spent nuclear waste from the country's power plants.

When nuclear power first came online, people didn't worry about the waste because they had faith that advances in "technology" would soon provide a solution to how to dispose of it. Well, it's been 50 years now, and the best that technology has come up with is to enclose the waste in metal casks and bury it under a mountain in Southern Nevada. This, despite the fact that it will still be deadly to human beings hundreds of thousands of years from now.

We hope people aren't snowed by the slick ads planned by the NEI. The plan for the nuclear waste that has already accumulated -- unsafe burial and the unsafe transportation of it for at least 25 years all across the country -- is a strong reason to oppose any more nuclear power plants. Any NRI ads that do not mention the unsolved problem of nuclear waste should be regarded as sheer propaganda.