Letter: Bush’s global nuclear project a waste of time

Sunday, March 26, 2006 | 7:02 a.m.

The Bush administration is proposing the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which will benefit the nuclear energy industry to the detriment of the American people. Aside from subsidies and tax breaks, the nuclear industry will build nuclear plants overseas and then we will take their nuclear waste here to recycle.

This is a hokey idea during wartime and will only benefit nuclear energy, electricity producers who are making record profits.

This has nothing to do with our energy crunch since it will take over a decade to build a nuclear plant and longer to develop a recycling process.

In this decade-plus, we should use the subsidies and tax breaks to develop alternative sources such as using corn to produce oil for the new diesel technology, as we now use cooking oil and soy bean oil. Brazil uses sugar cane to make alcohol which powers their cars. We should increase solar, wind, biomass, geothermal and the hydrogen battery, which will give us immediate benefit.

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership will involve us in the political life of foreign countries in the event of social unrest, civil war and terrorism. We have enough problems with Iraq and Afghanistan, with more problems in the wings from North Korea and Iran.

Can you believe the Bush administration calls this nonproliferation? Obviously they learned nothing from Iran and North Korea. Civilian use leads to weapons development.

Frank Perna, Las Vegas