Word: fuel
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...solution. Critics, not surprisingly, say the comeback of the $43 billion-a-year industry is a step in the wrong direction that will threaten the environment as well as public health and safety. Nor did the Administration's unexpected recommendation to take another look at reprocessing spent nuclear fuel get a particularly warm reaction...
...crowd, once radiated, is more than twice shy. Nuclear power plants may not, as the Bush Administration has pointed out countless times, emit greenhouse gases, but they carry with them their own, very real environmental risks. Most important, there is the matter of where to put all that spent fuel--40,000 metric tons, at last count--that has to be stored for thousands of years. For the moment, most of it is being kept in on-site storage pools, a costly and--according to many observers--risky proposition...
...bury the waste deep within Yucca Mountain in Nevada. But with the state's congressional delegation fiercely opposing the idea, the fight could easily drag on for years. If the site could be built, it would still be necessary to find a safe way to move all the fuel there without unduly imperiling the nation's crucial freight rails...
...Administration's proposal to reexamine nuclear recycling makes watchdogs even more nervous. Such reprocessing aims to reduce waste by separating plutonium from spent uranium fuel and reusing it as a power source. But this practice hasn't been done in the U.S. since the 1970s, and opponents say it could help put bomb-grade plutonium in the wrong hands...
...Dick Cheney may have flunked out Yale a couple of times, but he does not lack for brains. And his personal fuel pump may have been closed for repairs four times and counting, but he's not short on energy either. His younger friend the president gave him a familiar order - tackle this, will you? - and he has delivered again for Bush without upstaging him in the process. (The plan is now officially back in Bush's salesman hands...