• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Hobson Urges Feds to Consider Nuclear Energy As Fuel Source ; Lawmaker Faces Opposition to Plan for Reactor Material

Posted on: Friday, 16 December 2005, 21:00 CST

By Jessica Wehrman jwehrman@coxnews.com

WASHINGTON -- The federal government should consider nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuels as the nation wrestles with its dependency on foreign oil, Rep. David Hobson said Wednesday.

"There needs to be a dialogue," Hobson said. "There needs to be studies saying how do we take this country responsibly from energy dependence upon fossil fuels and get to something that will protect our way of life and our way to have jobs with relatively low cost energy."

Specifically, Hobson is pushing reprocessing or recycling spent fuel from a nuclear reactor to reuse plutonium for energy. In a speech organized by the Center for American Progress, a progressive Washington, D.C., think tank, the Springfield Republican said France is already reusing spent nuclear fuel effectively.

However, he said the United States needs to develop a better way of reusing the fuel, which could help diminish the urgent need for storage facilities such as Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Hobson's remarks are meaningful because his role as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on energy and water development gives him oversight and funding authority over energy issues, including nuclear energy and oil.

Hobson included $50 million in this year's energy and water development appropriations, and directed the Department of Energy to plan for and initiate a site selection process to develop spent fuel recycling facilities.

The United States 30 years ago decided not to extract plutonium from commercial high-level radioactive waste. Critics, including the National Resource and Defense Council and Greenpeace, say trying to reuse the fuel could contaminate the environment and be too costly. They argue French use of this technology has not been as successful as Hobson has made it out to be, and that reprocessing spent fuel creates even more dangerous waste.

"I can understand wanting to take waste and turn it into gold -- we've been wanting to do that since Rumplestiltskin and alchemy -- but the reality is this is a deadly material that should be removed from the biosphere and should be protected from terrorists," said Jim Riccio, a nuclear policy analyst with Greenpeace.

Source: Dayton Daily News

More News in this Category