Editorial: Nuke power ‘makeover’

Friday, Jan. 14, 2005 | 4:48 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

January 15 - 16, 2005

Late-night comedians needle President Bush for his occasional malapropisms, but such jesting, as Bush might say, "misunderestimates" him. Specifically, the Bush White House excels at coining clever phrases for policies that hide their true intent. For instance, Bush called his policy to relax air pollution rules the "Clear Skies Initiative" and dubbed his regulation to cut more trees in U.S. forests the "Healthy Forests Initiative."

The president doesn't get sworn in again for a second term until Thursday, but apparently he couldn't wait to try out his latest doublespeak. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Bush said the nation needs advanced nuclear power plants, which he called a source of clean, "renewable" energy. "It (nuclear power) certainly answers a lot of our issues," he said. "It certainly answers the environmental issue."

That's right, the president says nuclear power is a renewable energy source, just like wind and solar. The president neglects to mention, in this warm-and-fuzzy makeover, nuclear power's deadly byproduct: high-level radioactive waste, which is dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Not a single state in the nation wants radioactive waste, which is why President Bush is trying to force the burial of 77,000 tons of this deadly substance at Yucca Mountain, just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

John Rowe, the chief executive officer of Exelon Corp., which operates the most nuclear power plants in the United States, couldn't be happier with Bush's comments. "It's always gratifying to have the president on your side," Rowe said. Indeed, Rowe told The Wall Street Journal that the nuclear power industry needs Congress and the White House to help get rid of the legal and regulatory obstacles that so far are delaying the opening of Yucca Mountain.

We hope that Bush doesn't side with Rowe on relaxing safety standards now in place, but the president hasn't exactly been a friend to Nevadans on Yucca Mountain. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush promised Nevadans that he would use "sound science" to determine Yucca Mountain's fate, but then turned right around and persuaded Congress to approve the project -- despite mounting scientific evidence that shipping the waste and burying it here would be dangerous. That's why we aren't "misunderestimating" the president, who very well might try to stick it to the state one more time by making it even easier to get a nuclear waste dump opened in Nevada.